Defrag by Elf X

2005-12-08T13:05:00.000-08:00

Defrag
Author: Elf X
Rating: PG; mild language
Type of Fic: Casefile; humor
Spoiler Warning: Ghost in the Machine, Kill Switch, First
Person Shooter, Leonard Betts, Dod Kalm.
Summary: Mulder and Scully must solve the seemingly
impossible murder of the world's healthiest man, a
computer genius
Disclaimer: Mulder, Scully, and their cohorts are not my
property, but are the inspiration of Chris Carter, 1013
Productions, and Fox
Feedback: Send feedback to fwidsvnt@ilfb.org

Field notes of Special Agent Fox Mulder
Seattle, Wash.
2:14 a.m.

Here's the way I reconstruct it, based on the Seattle Police
Department Homicide incident report, the accounts of
witnesses at the Randall Cloyson residence, my knowledge
of Cloyson's general household habits, and the revelations
regarding the death of Randall Cloyson uncovered by myself
and my partner, Federal Bureau of Investigations Special
Agent Dana Scully.

That July evening, Cloyson returned to his bedroom suite
after a late night of pool and videos with his personal
physicians – all five of them, to be precise. As was his
nightly custom, he engaged the encoded digital security
system that virtually segregated his master bedroom from
the rest of his 40-room home.

Only two individuals possessed the voice recognition
capabilities to breach the tamper-proof, virus-proof system
-- Randy Cloyson and his primary physician, Douglas Pugh.
The seizure had to have come on mere minutes after he'd
settled into his king- sized, orthopedic bed -- one Cloyson
himself had designed, with thousands of cells that adjusted
electronically to the specific contours of his spine and
lumbar muscles and provided uniform bodily warmth as he
rolled, turned, stretched, and dreamed about whatever
billionaire computer geniuses were able to only dream
about.

Randy Cloyson's mind was a human diagnostic tool unlike
that of any other Homo sapiens -- it had been his life's goal
and the source of his fortune to provide others with the
means to instantly analyze and resolve problems. It took
him but a split second to recognize what was happening to
him, and to seize the bedside phone. He punched Pugh's
extension.

"Yeah?" Pugh murmured sleepily. "You need some
(expletive deleted) warm milk, or you want me to hold your
(expletive deleted) hand 'til you go on standby mode?"

"The laws," Cloyson rasped with a tone of what Pugh could
only term astonishment. "Broke the laws..."

With his first barely comprehensible word, Cloyson realized
the toxin in his system was doing its work, paralyzing his
tongue and preventing him from identifying his killer.
"Randy, man, hold on, I'm coming!"

Pugh was now wide-awake and on the move, calling 911
and rushing to the East Wing and Cloyson's quarters.
Cloyson was left alone, and he knew instinctively that the
poison was shutting down system after system, like a
Trojan virus burning uncontrollably through system files. He
focused all his diagnostic/decisionmaking powers on the
task at hand. Cloyson's fingers were going numb -- the pen
and pad at bedside would be as useless as a piano is to a
cat. He tested a few words -- they were meaningless garble.

Then he caught sight of the monitor on the swing table
beside his bed -- a convenience for midnight inspirations
Cloyson otherwise might forget by morning. The wordpad
program was up, awaiting his spoken word (but voice
recognition was, of course, out) or exuberant keystrokes.
He used what muscles were still functioning to pull himself
to within a foot of the keyboard.

But what to say, and how to say it? It was vital others knew
how he had perished, but he could not allow for an error in
communications that might put an innocent employee or
houseguest behind bars. Cloyson ran down the possibilities,
eliminating each with a mental tick. Then it came to him in
a blinding flash of elegant simplicity, and Cloyson's clublike
index finger wavering tremblingly over the keys as he
concentrated his last ebbing thoughts on performing with
precision. The finger descended three times, most likely as
Douglas Pugh was composing himself for a fourth try at
voice admission to the Cloyson boudoir. Pugh found Cloyson
in full, irrevocable arrest, lying diagonally across his bed, his
finger crooked over a computer keyboard.

After assuring himself that Randy Cloyson was thoroughly
deceased -- that failure, plus some self-prescribed meds
washed down with costly Scotch and a spotty adherence to
his Hippocratic Oath, had previously been his professional
downfall -- the physician peered at Cloyson's dying
keystrokes "H-2-O" and then quickly at the bedside table.

With uncharacteristic sobriety, Pugh sealed the Cloyson
bedroom from the outside and willed himself to meet the
EMTs and inevitable local law enforcement presence without
any alcoholic or pharmaceutical fortification.

Of course, this is only my own speculation, given a few
melodramatic underpinnings. But the nuts and bolts are
there, and overreaching and crystal-balling essentially are
how I earn a Bureau paycheck and cozy quarters in the
basement of the J. Edgar Hoover Building.

Randy Cloyson home
Seattle
9: 32 a.m.

"H20," Scully repeated for the fifth time since we'd been
admitted into the suburban Seattle mansion of Randall
Cloyson, the Crown Prince of Cyberspace.

My partner was a bit out of sorts after a particularly
turbulent plane ride, and I was staying a good three feet
out of the potential blast zone.

"Detective?"

SPD Det. First Grade Ernest McAfee grunted as he pulled his
bulk from the carpet, where he was looking for fibers or
hairs or maybe just the last bit of Dunkin' Donuts refuse
he'd carried onto the crime scene on his lapels. "Yuh."

"No one's touched that water, right?"

Scully asked, waving an arm toward the half- full glass on
the bedside table. Scully might have said it was half-empty,
but I like to think I'm a fed with a healthy outlook.

"Nah, me and the guys just wet our whistle a little, played
world rules soccer with the glass, and washed it nice and
clean before putting it back, what do you think?"

I backed off another foot to examine the fine woodwork of
Cloyson's headboard as Scully blinked one bland but implicit
death threat at the detective.

McAfee blinked back and stumbled against the computer
table. "Nah, agent, we ascertained that the decedent's
transcription might pertain to the, um, water glass in
question."

Scully broke eye contact. "If you'd be so kind, could you
have this water sealed and delivered immediately to the
M.E.'s office for analysis?"

"Hmm," the detective hastily agreed, and retreated.

"So this is the world's fourth richest man," she asked,
eyeing the bound Frank Miller Batman collection open next
to the water glass and the nearby shelves crammed with
sci-fi novels and technical journals. I scanned the collection
with envy, Scully with pursed lips.

"Self-made man, between beatings from the football and
cheerleading squads and probably the tougher accounting
students," I supplied. I had a number of Cloysoft's
diagnostic/decisionmaking programs on my home and office
PCs. One lonely evening, I'd killed a few hours calling 900
numbers and watching Cloyson's Diogenes 3.0 stress
analysis program spike with each bit of clumsily seductive
trash talk andego stroking. Occasionally, my muffled
giggling would offend the phone sex technician, but at least
I kept my hand on the mouse.

I did not share this testament to the unerring efficacy of
Randy Cloyson's life's work. "After fast-talking himself out a
high school hacking charge -- he got caught giving the
entire U.S. Senate delegation bad credit ratings -- he
decided to put his talents to more lucrative use and slipped
into UCLA. His first program was a shareware
decisionmaking app called Socrates, which he sold on the
Internet to finance a philosophy major and the occasional
kegger. By his senior year, one of the major software firms
had offered Cloyson $100,000 for Socrates 4.0, but he
realized greater riches were to be had from writing code
than from reading dead Greeks.

"He and one of his computer profs set up shop in the prof's
old rec room, and within a few months, they released
Socrates 5.0. You've heard of artificial intelligence? Well,
Cloyson has nearly perfected the science of artificial instinct.
Where most decisionmaking tools rely on dry facts and
figures and general trends, Socrates 5.0 required the user
and one close friend or relative to complete an exhaustive
quiz on likes, dislikes, social and political views, and other
personal data, then used that input not only to weigh
external probabilities and wild cards, but any emotional
quirks and personality deficiencies that might cause the
user to screw up the decision he or she makes."

"Emotional quirks, huh?" Scully murmured.

"Youch. OK, long story short. Within five years, Cloyson
buys out his mentor, Cloysoft gets the cover of Fortune, and
Randy starts showing up at Lakers games with Jack
Nicholson and Warren Beatty. He moves back to Seattle, his
hometown, and buys this palatial mansion and, from the
looks of things, the entire D.C. and Marvel Comics libraries.
The American Dream, cyberstyle."

"Except he's locked up 24 hours day in this tastefully
decorated Fortress of Solitude, surrounded by the entire
Seattle-area membership of the American Medical
Association,"

Scully added. "Cloyson's college roommate contracted a
lethal and very messy case of viral meningitis about his
junior year, and it left Cloyson with a rabid case of
hypochondria that only intensified once he hit the big-time.
Howard Hughes Syndrome, I guess: If you're the man who
has everything, the only thing you can't buy off is your
immortality."

Scully perched carefully on the edge of the bedside table.
"Mulder, what are we doing here? I didn't buy Skinner's
story about defense software contracts and national
security, and I see nothing here that constitutes anything
more than a reasonably unusual homicide. Certainly, none
of the usual trappings of an X-file."

I looked at her incredulously. "Scully, c'mon. Billionnaire
computer geek, murdered by means of a mysterious poison
in a room irrefutably locked from the inside, leaves a dying
clue. Dr. Watson, the game's afoot."

"Ah, I'm Dr. Watson and you're Holmes again," Scully said.
"All right, I'll be Charlie, and you can be the Angel of your
choice." My partner looked at me for a full 20 seconds. "I'll
be downstairs."

**

"Hey, you," a voice greeted me from down the hallway. I
turned to see a round man with Coke bottle lenses, a
rumpled blue work shirt, and red suspenders, seemingly in
his sixties. He looked like he'd be more at home in a bait
shop than in a billionaire's quarters. "Anybody got any
coffee going down there?"

"Sir, this is a crime scene," I informed the stranger. "I don't
think you're supposed to be here –"

The man blinked and snapped a suspender. "Gee, guess we
better call Washington and tell 'em they wasted plane fare
and a travel advance. Who're you, I might ask?"

"Special Agent Fox Mulder, FBI," I supplied.

"Oh, yeah, you're the ghostbuster," he nodded. "Well, I'm
Ollie Phelps, from the San Francisco Bureau office,
Computer Investigations. Our bosses want me to crack open
Cloyson's hard drive, see what's up. National security, all
that happy horseshit."

"A.D. Skinner told us Cloysoft was working on some defense
contracts, Pentagon security, etc." The old man removed his
glasses and began to polish them on his shirttail.

"Yeah, little of that, what with the recent hacking and all.
Cloyson was also developing some new military strategy
software – Cloysoft's who came up with that Alexander
program they used in the Persian Gulf War, you know. So
what's the deal?"

"I'm guessing homicide, although I can't figure out --"

"Naw, kid. I mean the coffee. You want to be a pal and see
if you can scare up a pot for an old cybergeek?"

"Regular or decaf?"

**

Randy Cloyson's doctors were downstairs, in Randall
Cloyson's stadium-scaled living room. All five of them.

"Doug, Doug Pugh," the tall one leapt from the leather
couch. He had a deep leathery golf tan that probably would
have worked better on someone several years his senior
and that likely would mutate into ugly melanomic patches
by the time he reached that stage. His greeting and hearty
frathouse handshake made me feel like Flounder in Animal
House, waiting to be initiated into a strange new world of
complicated drinks and endless conversations about Tiger
Woods and Greg Norman.

Douglas Pugh had once been a brilliant diagnostician at
Boston's St. Eligius Hospital – until he got showed up at the
OR with, to paraphrase George Thorogood, with his old
buddy Jack Daniels. St. Eligius, the Massachusetts
Physicians Review Board, and Dr. Pugh came to an
understanding, and the good doctor, so to speak, fled
quietly to Starbucks Land, where he managed to snag a gig
with his old college buddy, Randy. The other members of
Pugh's medical fraternity were scattered over plush chairs
and sofas.

"Agents, this is Rudy Spizak, Randy's hypnotherapist," Pugh
informed me, gesturing toward a whalebelly white med
school skeleton of a man whose lips spasmed in a bad
imitation of a smile. "Ed Koller, chiropractor." A large, rosy
man saluted cheerfully. "Mace Pasteur here is a herbalist."
The guy who looked like one of the Grateful Dead nodded
serenely at Scully and I. "And this is Nancy Yee, Randy's
acupuncturist."

I glanced at Yee, a small but compactly constructed
thirtysomething woman in a black mini suit who smiled drily
at me and arched an eyebrow. I smiled back probably for
too long, because when I looked over at Scully, she too was
arching an eyebrow. But she wasn't smiling, and her body
language didn't have quite the same impact as Dr. Yee's.

"Talk about a house call," I said. "Mr. Cloyson liked to cover
all his bets, didn't he?"

Pugh grinned. "Randy was your classic hypochondriac,
Agent. He didn't really trust medical science, but he figured
if he tried a little of everything, something would take. I
took care of the colds and minor aches, Nancy and Ed
Randy's back pains and chronic carpal tunnel syndrome,
Rudy worked on his phobias and cravings, and Mace fed him
gingko and St. John's wort whenever he was stressed out or
in the middle of a major project."

"And you all lived here with Mr. Cloyson?" Scully inquired,
fixing Yee with a sharp but fleeting glance.

"On call 24-7," Spizak drawled, plucking at the arm of his
wing chair. "Whenever Randy needed medical services like
ordering pizzas or mediating Trivial Pursuit. The
dysfunctional family Randy never had, I guess."

"Cold, Rudy," Pasteur murmured. "Notice you never kicked
too hard about that six figures you pulled in to party and
play eight-ball."

"C'mon, guys," Koller urged.

"Once again, a penetrating response, Eddie," Spizak said
sardonically. "Like something out of Oscar Wilde."

Koller hopped twice on his left foot. Scully looked curiously
at me. Koller looked defensively back at us.

"Naw, he's right, man," Pasteur cautioned Spizak. "No need
for us to go at it like Mike Tyson and Oscar de la Hoya."

The big chiropractor again bobbed up and down on one foot,
then yawned as if he hadn't been aware of his odd behavior.

"Guys," Pugh scolded wearily.

"So, are we suspects?" Yee asked me.

"Well, it's routine to interview everyone who was with the
victim during the hours before he died. But I don't know if
I'd call you suspects. Although the nature of the poison that
killed Mr. Cloyson might tell us whether his murderer had
any medical expertise. Dr. Pugh, what kind of medications
did you have Mr. Cloyson on?"

Pugh's eyes darted toward his colleagues, who suddenly
turned expressionless. "Currently, nothing, really. Randy
had been in amazingly good health."

"Anybody else? Dr. Pasteur? Any particular herbs that could
accidentally have contained poisonous plant material?"

"Dude, I'm a specialist," Pasteur huffed. "I don't just go out
in the woods and grab any ragweed or toadstool I see. We
were using primary culinary herbs, a few mood- enhancing
botanicals. Randy was taking a little gingko biloba for
memory improvement – little stronger concentration than
what you'd get at Wal-Mart, but nothing exotic."

"Dr. Spizak, do you use any drugs to induce hypnotic
state?" Scully asked the cadaverous man in the wing chair.

"Didn't need 'em, not with Cloyson, anyway," he said. "For
so skeptical and cynical a man, he was surprisingly
suggestible. He'd drop off like a rock without any sedatives
or tranquilizers."

"Dr. Koller? Dr. Yee? Any special medications or
pharmaceuticals?"

"No drugs – just natural physical therapy," Koller said,
sounding like an informercial.

Yee shook her head as she smiled at me. "Some
acupuncturists use herbs or drugs; I don't. Just my needles
and some shiatsu massage. Acupressure. I'll show you how
it works if you'd like, Agent Mulder."

"I do have a little tension…" I began, searching for some
ache or pain, anywhere.

"Thank you, Dr. Yee – we'll remember that," Scully
responded, coolly. Rowrr. "We'd like you to help recall
everything Mr. Cloyson might have ingested or drank last
night. You all were with him last night, correct?"

The group murmured assent. "Anybody else?" I asked.

"Grant Pullman, one of Randy's VPs at Cloysoft," Pugh
volunteered. He stopped by to discuss a few company
matters, maybe an hour or so before we ate. Nobody else –
Randy thought having domestics was a holdover from a
feudal society, so he had a cleaning service but no live-in.
He lived on pizza and fast food, mostly. The rest of us either
te out or cooked for ourselves. Last night, we ordered
several pizzas – let's see, a sausage, a pepperoni, one
deluxe, a veggie for Nancy and Mace… Randy had, oh, a few
slices of pepperoni, a little sausage, some of the deluxe."

"Did you use your usual pizza delivery?" I inquired.

"Puget Pizza and Pasta," Pugh supplied. "We have some
leftovers in the kitchen trash, crusts and the like. In case
you want to do any tests."

"Thanks. The pizza was all for Cloyson? What did he wash it
down with?"

"Three or four Grolsches, some Dr. Pepper."

"Nothing else?"

"He did have some Doritos when we were playing pool,"
Pasteur supplied. "Nursed another Bud."

Scully frowned. "And Mr. Cloyson seemed to be fine all
evening? No signs of discomfort, pain?"

"Nah," Spizak said. "Man ate like a teenager at a permanent
Superbowl party, never exercised, drank enough beer to
make Anheuser-Busch a quarterly profit all by himself, but
he had amazing energy and stamina."

"Mm," Yee agreed too quickly. "I mean, he seemed to get
by on almost no sleep and still outrun all of us."

Pugh stepped forward. "Agents, you are testing the water,
aren't you? The water on Randy's bedside table? You know,
what he typed before he died?"

"It's already on its way to the lab," I told him. "Can any of
you think of any other interpretation of H2O, water, that
would be relevant to Mr. Cloyson?"

The doctors looked blankly at Scully and I.

"OK," I sighed. "Just don't any of you leave town, hear?"

Koller stood up. "Hey, Agent, if you're suggesting we had
any part in this…"

I held up a hand. "Sorry, Doc. Just kidding. Something I
always wanted to say."

"Yeah, don't be an Oscar the Grouch," Spizak chided,
glancing at Pasteur. Koller hopped like a bunny. Pugh
coughed. I studied Koller. He glared back.

"By the way, Dr. Koller," I experimented. "Was Cloyson a
fairly neat housekeeper?" The chiropractor blinked. "What? I
don't get you." "I mean, did he keep things picked up, or
was he a slob? You know, like that old show, The Odd
Couple: Was he more like Felix? Or was he an Oscar?"

Koller's bulk bounced twice. "Didn't that Matthau dude win
an award for playing him in the movie version?" Pasteur
said. "You know, an Oscar?"

The floor trembled slightly as Koller hopped again.

"C'mon, Scully," I invited innocently. "Let's go grab some
lunch. Maybe a hot dog. I feel like an Oscar Mayer —"

"Mulder," Scully ordered as the lamp beside her shook.

Seattle Police Department Headquarters.
12:56 p.m.

"It's absolutely unethical, as well as unprofessional," my
partner fumed as she pulled on latex gloves for the
postmortem. A call from Skinner, and the SPD had handed
its entire CSI Division and pathology lab over to Scully and
I. "A health care professional planting post-hypnotic
suggestions in a colleague. The three of you making that
poor, um, chiropractor dance like some freshman at a
hazing party."

"I was testing a hypothesis," I protested, backing off as
Scully selected a scalpel for her initial incision into the
mortal remains of Randy Cloyson. "Koller was clearly
unaware of his erratic behavior, and I just guessed 'Oscar'
was Spizak's trigger word."

"I wonder what kind of post-hypnotic suggestion you'd like
to try on Dr. Yee," Scully muttered, cutting with
unnecessary gusto into the software king.

"Yuck," I said, turning hastily away from the table. "What
do you mean by that, if I may ask?"

"Autopsy of Randall Cloyson, male Caucasion, aged 38,"
Scully recited into the morgue's recorder mike. "What I
mean, Mulder, is that you've been exhibiting some
particularly adolescent behavior since we arrived on the
scene. And Dr. Yee's coquettish flirtations certainly don't
help foster a serious investigatory environment."

"Coquettish flirtation?" I laughed. "Gee, Scully, you're going
to give me the vapors."

"Never mind, Mulder," she snapped. "Now, why don't you
either weigh this liver for me or go get a scalding cup of
coffee and pour it—"

"All right," I growled, heading for the door. "Fine."

"Whatever."

Upstairs, I found a breakroom vending machine, and I
sipped at some sluggish coffee any self-respecting Seattlite
would use only to clean a septic tank as I considered the
case. Despite Scully's derision, Koller's dance routine had
given me an idea about the method of Cloyson's murder.

I was still a little hinky about the computer tycoon's dying
clue. If Cloyson knew or thought the poison was in the
water glass by the bed, why had he typed such a
convoluted message on his computer keyboard? Why not
simply 'water.' I'd double-checked my laptop, and all the
letters needed to spell it were in the same area of the
keyboard. For a delirious, half-paralyzed man, the
characters 'H,' '2,' and 'O' would be the equivalent of miles
away from each other. Why make his job harder?

And if he was poisoned with the water, didn't he have any
idea who the killer was? Certainly, the cops would
determine easily enough the source of the poison, if it was
in the water, and if that was so, then someone in the house
must've handed Cloyson the fatal glass. Why not identify
the killer?

"Hey, Agent, you got it cracked yet?" a dry, somewhat
belligerent voice sounded behind me. I looked up and
gestured Det. McAfee toward the chair across from me. He
deposited a Sprite and a suspiciously grayish ham salad
sandwich from a nearby machine.

"Actually, Detective, this is a very unusual case. Almost like
something out of an Agatha Christie novel."

"Agatha what?"

"Sorry. Like Murder, She Wrote. We have a locked room, a
dying clue, and a houseful of suspects."

"Locked room, my ass," McAfee snorted. "Look, he could've
taken that poison any time last evening. And even if he
didn't, you know as well as me how good some of these
computer hackers are. The lock on his part of the house was
computer-operated – you gonna tell me somebody with a
jones for Cloyson and a way with a mouse couldn't get
through it and poison that water?"

I sipped my "coffee." "You know anybody with a 'jones' for
Randall Cloyson?"

"Well, hell, look at the news, Agent. Department of Justice
was sleeping on his front lawn, trying to get him on this
antitrust thing. He'd driven two or three companies out of
business in just the past two years. You don't think maybe
there's a few disgruntled, laid-off computer geeks out there
who'd like to spike his water supply? Then you got your
anti-techies, like that Kaczynski nut, think Cloyson's fucking
with the primal forces of nature. And anytime you got
somebody like Cloyson, best at what he does, you got folks
want to prove they're better. And what would be better at
proving you're the best than cracking the big man's security
system?"

McAfee apparently was capable of doing two things at once,
and I flicked a speck of projectile ham salad from my lapel.

"Thanks for sharing. Your thoughts, that is. What about the
Dynamic Doctors, the Hippocratic houseguests? Any
motivation there?"

"I don't know specifically, but I was a multi-billionnaire, I'd
think I could hire a better medical staff than that crew.
Pugh got quietly fired for getting shit-faced on the job. That
Spizak guy almost got himself dismembered by some irate
husband said the good doctor felt up his wife while he had
her tranced. And Pasteur's got a sheet of borderline drug
stuff a mile long, goin' back to the '70s."

"Anything on Nancy Yee?"

McAfee's grim mood broke. "I'd like to get something on
Nancy Yee. Um, naw, nothing. Had a practice here in town,
did pretty well for herself 'til Cloyson recruited her for his
little one-man clinic."

"And Ed Koller? He seems kind of out-of-place with the rest
of them."

"Koller? He was one of those guys you see on commercials
3 a.m. or so, in the middle of Dukes of Hazzard or Roseanne
reruns? Don't know where Cloyson met up with him. Look, I
know you guys got the weight around here, but do me a
favor and clue me in if you get anything, OK?"

McAfee grunted to his feet and ambled out, leaving his
sandwich wrapper and soda can for the custodial staff or the
ravages of time. I thought about chatting it up with a few of
my brothers in law enforcement, but nobody in the
breakroom looked chatty, and they all wore big guns. I
finished my beverage-like substance and headed back
downstairs, an equally tantalizing prospect. Scully was
seated on an empty lab table in her scrubs, hands at her
sides, staring and frowning at Cloyson's corpse.

"Scully?" I probed, moving closer. "Hey, Scully. You OK?"

She turned and looked at me with wide eyes. "Yeah. I'm
fine, Mulder."

"Did, ah, did everything go OK?"

"Perfectly," Scully murmured. "Too perfectly, in truth."

Randall Cloyson home
4:07 p.m.

Doug Pugh carefully selected a Titleist as he set his
margarita on the Astroturf near my feet. "I don't get you.
So Randy was in good health for a man his age."

"Dr. Pugh," Scully said, crossing her arms. "Randall Cloyson
was in good shape for a man of any age. In fact, Randall
Cloyson very likely was in better shape than any human
being in the history of mankind. Every organ was fully
functioning and in ideal condition. His muscular systems
displayed perfect tone and conformation, although you told
us Cloyson was averse to any form of exercise. And there
were anomalies."

"Anomalies?" Pugh asked casually, faking interest as he
lined up his club. The doctor was doing a bucket of balls and
a gallon of tequila and lime juice on the driving range
behind the Cloyson mansion.

"Based on Cloyson's medical history – injuries, minor
traumas, and the like – he seemed to possess amazing
powers of tissue regeneration. And the appendix. You know
the appendix has no known function in human biology –
that whatever use it once served has been lost through
evolution. Well, while the normal appendix is an average 9
centimeters in length, Randall Cloyson's was nearly 18
centimeters, and appeared fully functional. In short, for a
man who ate nothing but fat and empty calories, who
guzzled gallons of beer, who exercised less than the
average three-toed sloth, Randall Cloyson was not only a
perfect medical specimen, but supernaturally,
supernormally so."

"Yeah, he was in pretty good shape," Pugh said, licking salt
from the rim of his drink. "He was turning the rest of us
gray, but he seemed to just get younger and younger each
passing day."

Scully looked at Pugh, open-mouthed, then at me, then
back at Pugh. "Doctor, you were Cloyson's personal
physician. You must have noticed something unusual."

"Well," Pugh grinned. "Last several months, I didn't really
do much doctoring. Neither did the rest of the guys. Randy
had never had much of an opinion of doctors – he'd had a
bad experience in college, and his dad died after a botched
liver operation. And…"

He stopped short. "Anyway, it doesn't take a genius to see
none of us are on the short list for the Nobel Prize in
medicine – well, except maybe Nan, but that's a different
story. I always figured Randy kind of liked having a house
full of quacks around – sort of living justification for his
disdain, plus some live-in buddies to party with."

"You're evading the question, Doctor," I chided. "What was
the other reason Randall Cloyson didn't trust doctors?"

"I may be able to answer that, Mulder," Scully supplied.
"What I also found were artifacts of past treatment – cancer
treatment. From all appearances, pancreatic cancer. But
Cloyson was obviously in full and complete remission. A
second opinion, Dr. Pugh?"

Pugh's grin fell away, and he dropped into a nearby patio
chair. "Oh, hell; guess there's no reason not to tell, now.
We – the company and the rest of us – kept things quiet so
Cloysoft's stock wouldn't go in the crapper. He was dying –
the cancer'd gotten inoperable and untreatable, totally
metasticized. We kept him away from the press, built up the
hermit image, and just tried to keep him comfortable 'til his
time was up. Randy just kept working away, though, right
up to the end.

"But then there wasn't any end. Randy started rallying – the
cancer just started to, well, disappear. Within a few months,
he was in full remission."

"Did he provide any kind of explanation for his recovery?"
Scully asked. Pugh shrugged. "Just kind of smiled
mysteriously whenever I asked, like it was his own little
private joke. After that, he only consulted me for an
occasional checkup, and he always checked out great.
Freakily so. And he wouldn't let Spizak put him under
anymore."

"Really?" I felt my stomach sink slightly. "Did that go for the
others?" "Well, certainly the back-cracker, even though
Randy wanted to keep him around for the amusement
value. Nancy, now…" Pugh smirked.

"I will take it that you're indicating Mr. Cloyson and Dr. Yee
had a relationship that was other than professional," Scully
said with frosty congeniality.

"Just my medical opinion, plus the fact they disappeared
together every other weekend," Pugh swirled the tiny
puddle of margarita mix at the bottom of his snifter. "Time
for seconds. You guys still on duty?"

"You knock yourself out," I invited. "C'mon, Scully."

Back in the house, Scully put a hand on my arm. "Mulder,
what was that about Spizak? Your face just about hit the
ground when Pugh said Cloyson wouldn't let Spizak
hypnotize him."

I looked around the hall, and smiled and waited patiently as
Ollie Phelps edged past with a mug of steaming coffee, pens
and tools clipped to his suspenders, glasses at half mask.

"Agent," he grunted. "Agent."

"Agent," I responded. Scully nodded.

"Made some fresh," Phelps grunted. "Had to go out to a
minimart – the hippie and the needle doctor are tea people,
and the doc out there doesn't drink anything ain't
fermented or distilled. Coffee capital of the world, and I
gotta go to the Gas-and-Gulp to get my fix. Later." Ollie
disappeared back into the Cloyson suite.

"You saw how Spizak had Koller hopping around like a rabid
wallaby?" I asked Scully. "OK. We're faced with the question
of how Randy Cloyson was poisoned in a locked room."

"If indeed that's where the poison was administered," Scully
countered. "If indeed. Cloyson's security system looks
pretty fullproof, and this bunch hardly appears able to open
a new jar of kosher dill gherkins, much less a complex
computer- operated vault. So what would be the best way
to poison Cloyson from inside his pickle jar? How 'bout
getting Cloyson to poison himself?"

"You're thinking Spizak planted some kind of post-hypnotic
suggestion in Cloyson. 'Put on your jammies, fluff up your
pillow, and kill yourself'?"

"It could've been something much more innocuous. 'You're
very hungry – eat a cookie.' 'You're very thirsty – have a
glass of water.' The suggestion could've been planted during
a routine hypnotherapy session."

Scully nodded. "Except there hadn't been any sessions. So
what now?"

"Let's visit Dr. Yee. I want to know some more about
acupuncture. Maybe I can get a free treatment."

"Never minded having a little prick, huh?"

"Meow."

**

"The first acupuncture needles were actually made of
stone," Nancy Yee informed me. Scully sat nearby,
glowering. "Later, bronze, gold, or silver were used. Most of
the needles now are steel. The theory of acupuncture is that
there are 'meridian points' on the body connected to the
internal organs and that vital energy flows along those
lines. Diseases are caused by interrupted energy flow, and
inserting and twirling needles restores normal flow."

"Wow," I said, avoiding Scully's incredulous glance. "And
this works with really serious diseases?"

Yee shrugged. "Chinese doctors treat some forms of heart
disease with acupuncture. There have been studies that
back it up. Ulcers, hypertension, appendicitis, and asthma
also can be treated with acupuncture. Medicare even covers
some procedures, you know. Uh, sorry, Agent. I get a little
defensive about my science. So many people label
acupuncture and acupressure as voodoo witchcraft. Ancient
Chinese secret, you know?"

"People can be so narrow," I tsk'ed. Scully coughed. "Dr.
Yee," my partner inquired.

"Can acupuncture be used to treat cancer?" Yee's jaw
tightened. "Theoretically, I could see a rationale to assume
it could be used in some cases. I haven't seen a lot of
documentation in that direction. Look, that drunk bastard
told you about Randy's cancer, didn't he? Well, Randy
wanted to keep that our secret, and as his physicians, we
respected his desire for confidentiality. Until now,
apparently."

"Theoretically, Dr. Yee, how would you explain Mr. Cloyson's
seemingly miraculous recovery?"

"I'm not an oncologist," Yee responded. "Randy didn't
confide in me."

"That's not what I've heard," Scully murmured. "Pugh
again, huh? OK, Randy and I had a little something going,
no big secret. Every once in a while, we'd get out of the
Washington Home for Terminal Malpractice and drive up the
coast. Except for droning on a little too much about
computers and the deep web and Isaac Asimov and Greek
philosophy, he was a lot of fun. And now, unless you want
me to get a lawyer, I think our time is up. Anything else,
agents?"

I rotated my shoulder. "I do have a little tension…"

Yee plucked a long needle from the table. "Here. I think you
might know where to stick this."

"I think she likes me," I suggested as I watched the
acupuncturist stride briskly down the hall. "Yeow! Hey!"

Scully examined the point of the needle with which she'd
just jabbed me. "Maybe I've misjudged her," my partner
said serenely. "I already feel better."

Seattle West Hyatt
7:34 p.m.

"Randall Cloyson had become a media paradox viewed
through a mist of industry folklore and his own increasingly
reclusive and eccentric nature," Jack Perkins narrated over
a sequence of photos and video clips that captured a
thirtysomething man who looked like he'd never left the
high school debating team.

Condoleeza Rice had been tonight's scheduled Biography,
but with Randy Cloyson's murder the day's top news, the
A&E people had dug into the archives for a 2003 profile of
the cyberspace king. Scully'd gone back to the morgue to
further evaluate some "endocrine anomalies and some odd
enzymatic reactions" blablabla, yada yada, so I ordered up
some room service pizza and settled back for some quality
television. I hadn’t yet figured out how to expense the
Spectravision Adult Block, so I settled for basic cable.

So far, I'd learned Cloyson had been a gawky asthmatic
who'd almost cacked at the age of seven due to some
misprescribed drugs. His mother had succumbed to an
anesthesia-related error during relatively routine knee
surgery. A resulting malpractice award had provided
Cloyson with a topnotch college education and some seed
capital for his burgeoning software company.

"A devotee of ancient philosophers and statesmen who lived
and thrived in the technological future," Perkins continued.
"A developer of the nation's first line of defense against
hackers and e-terrorists, nonetheless under nearly constant
attack from the Department of Justice for what federal
officials have alleged to be his questionably ethical
competitive business practices. A Fortune 500 mainstay who
prefers an evening of The Simpsons and Chinese takeout to
CNN and power lunches. A man who could buy and sell
most of his peers in the industry, but who once told Bill
Gates, 'If I can't write code, I'd just as soon be dead.'

"But although some have dismissed Cloyson as a childlike
dilettante, a ruthless high-tech powerbroker given to
adolescent temper tantrums, the software giant is
passionate about a variety of causes, from preservation of
Brazil's rainforests (clip of Randall Cloyson posing
awkwardly with Madonna and Sting) and children's charities
(Cloyson and Jerry Lewis wrestling comically over a giant
Cloysoft check for Jerry's "kids") to his personal crusade
against medical incompetence and insensitivity…"

"HMOs, PPOs, the medical lobby in Washington – the
American medical community is forever looking for new
ways to clear time for a few more rounds at the course,"
Cloyson sneered at a bank of cameras following his father's
death under the knife.

"I wouldn't be surprised to see the AMA and the PGA merge
one of these days, hand out a stethoscope and a nine-iron
to every new med school graduate. These guys know Greg
Norman's career stats better than the Hippocratic Oath."

"Cloyson eventually channeled his wrath toward the medical
world into more constructive channels, introducing intuitive
new technology for the diagnosis of disease. Ironically, his
dream of a healthier world withered away when the
American Medical Association condemned his Hippocrates
software as 'an amateur's dangerous foray into fields best
left to the professional,' and refused to certify it for hospital
use. It was one of Cloyson's few failures, and one that
would drive the e-mogul deeper into a cocoon of reclusive
eccentricity. When Biography returns, Cloyson shares some
of his keys to success in cyberspace…"

I didn't figure Randall Cloyson was any too successful at this
point, so I started surfing the limited hotel channel
selection. The phone rang as I tried to work out how I could
expense some adult Spectravision back to the Bureau.
"Mulder."

"It's me, Mulder. I just got the toxicology back on Cloyson,
and it's as hinky as the rest of this case. Cloyson was killed
by what I can only described as a poisonous cocktail – some
exotic alkaloids, a couple of unusual plant enzymes, a few
compounds I can only guess at."

"Plant enzymes? Like herbs, maybe?"

"Possibly," Sculy drawled. "You're thinking Mace Pasteur,
right? But, Mulder, why would the killer go to the trouble of
devising this bizarre concoction when I can think of any
number of household chemicals, industrial compounds, or
pesticides that would have done the job? And particularly a
poison that contains enzymes that would point directly to an
expert in botany?"

"I don't know, Scully. You met the guy; I wouldn't be
surprised if he blew a few brain circuits during the '70s. If
we could figure out when he gave Cloyson the poisoned
water, or put the poison in the glass…"

Scully sighed deeply. "That's the other thing, Mulder. The
water was clean. No toxins, no drugs, no nothing." I sat up.

"But what about Cloyson's dying clue? H2O?"

"Mulder, for all we know, Cloyson's so-called 'clue' was just
a random few keystrokes by a man whose nervous system
was rapidly shutting down. I know it would be nice to tie
everything together in a nice Agatha Christie package, but
the water was a dead end. Which leads us back to how the
poison was administered."

"Which would appear to lead us back to Pasteur – he could
easily have convinced Cloyson to take some kind of witch's
brew that was designed to improve his memory or his way
with the la-dies…"

"As could Dr. Pugh," Scully interrupted, briskly. "People
tend to have an uncommon trust in their physician."

"Not Randy. He seemed to have a supreme contempt for
doctors, which makes his choice of houseguests that much
more mysterious."

"Not necessarily. If he had metastatic cancer, then it would
make sense that a man of science would try to tap
specialists in both conventional and alternative medicine.
Except, I would think a man of science would aim a little
higher than the group he selected. Damn, I'm getting a
headache. Huh? Hold on, Mulder."

I strained to hear what the muffled male voice was telling
Scully. Her own voice was slow and tinged with confusion
when she returned. "I'll pick you up, Mulder," she
instructed. "It seems your girlfriend got a lethal taste of her
own medicine."

Randall Cloyson home
8:47 p.m.

I tried not to look at the long steel needle jutting from the
base of Dr. Yee's skull, glinting in the bedroom light, as I
moved toward her dresser.

Scully concurred with the Seattle M.E.'s theory she had
struggled with her killer, but that the carefully inserted
needle – according to Scully, placed with "medical precision"
-- would have killed her almost immediately.

"The hell you doing?" McAfee snapped from the floor, where
he was looking for trace evidence. I looked down at him
innocently, despite the handful of the late doctor's
expensive and insubstantial lingerie bunched in my fingers.
Scully was looking at me, too, her brows arched in
bemusement.

"Uh," I responded intelligently. "In case you didn't know,
Lieutenant, Dr. Yee had a romantic relationship with
Cloyson."

"No shit, Sherlock," the cop said drily. "Well, where else
would she hide any secret notes or…"

I dug under some underwires and pulled out a collection of
Polaroids. "Or photographic souvenirs of her affair d'amour."

"Lousy French pronunciation, but a reasonably impressive
grasp of feminine psychology," Scully conceded.

"Please, I am a behavioral psychologist. Plus I've seen
every Sandra Bullock and Meg Ryan flick ever made. Let's
see what we've got here…Yipes, nice hardware, Randy.
Impressive software, too…"

"Mulder…"

"Sorry. Lieutenant, you want to turn on that overhead
light?" As the cop grunted his assent and lumbered over to
the switch, I quickly slipped three of the Polaroids into my
jacket. "Not much here – just a little more about Randy
Cloyson than I personally want to know."

McAfee took the remaining photos from me, scanned them
for a moment longer than was probably necessary, and,
prompted by Scully clearing her throat, dumped them in an
evidence bag. "Can the guys take her away now?"

"Just one thing," Scully murmured, moving back to Yee's
body. She tipped the acupuncturist's chin to reveal an ugly
perforated red welt. "You ever seen anything like this,
Lieutenant?"

McAfee's eyes popped open with surprise at Scully's
consultation. "Well, like you said, there was some kind of
struggle, and the perp probably clipped her one on the chin,
with a ring or something."

Scully frowned. "This is a pattern, too big for a metal ring.
It looks like teeth. I'll do some analysis at the lab, later."

McAfee nodded, and went to get the coroner's people.
Scully crossed her arms and leaned against Dr. Yee's
headboard. "All right, what's the deal, Mulder?"

I grinned. "What? Oh, the crucial evidence I just concealed
from local law enforcement officers?"

"Yes. That." I shrugged and displayed the Polaroids. The
first showed a beaming Randy Cloyson on the rustic porch
of a log cabin, the second Cloyson adding kindling to the
fireplace of what I assumed was the same cabin.

The third photo was the clincher. Cloyson and Yee likely had
gotten a tourist to snap them in front of a rural general
store or tavern, feigning menace as a stuffed grizzly
towered above them. The metal sign above them read The
Bear Market – probably run by some disenchanted Seattle
broker who'd seen a few too many Northern Exposures.

"So we find this Bear Market, hope the cabin is somewhere
nearby, and that the owner or some other local can identify
it," Scully said. "What do you hope to find at Cloyson's love
nest?"

I sat down on the mattress, where Yee had met her death.
"Not sure yet. I want to check a point or two, talk to
Pasteur first. You want me to be the good cop this time?"

I registered the severe look on Scully's face. "Sorry,
shouldn't have even asked."

**

The surviving doctors were in the living room, drowning
their grief with Scotch (Pugh), Doritos (Spizak and Koller),
and silent meditation (Pasteur). Pugh looked up blearily,
Koller anxiously, and Spizak suspiciously. Pasteur kept his
eyes closed and moved his lips without uttering a sound.

A bored Ollie Phelps was taking a rolling inventory of every
object and knick-knack in the room, occasionally hacking
and hitching his baggy slacks.

"Dr. Koller, you found the body," Scully began. The portly
chiropractor swallowed as he nodded. "TV Guide said
Casablanca was on cable tonight. It was Nancy's favorite."

"Great film," Spizak yawned. "I think Ingrid Bergman won
some award for it. You know, an Osc—"

"Doctor, please," I held up a hand. "So you went up to tell
her about it?"

Koller looked defensive, like a kid with a crush on the
teacher. "Just thought she'd want to know. But when I got
there, her door was open and she was just lying there with
that needle between her cervical vertebrae. I got Mr. Phelps
here – he was working down the hall -- and he called the
cops."

"And you guys were…?" I asked Pugh, Spizak, and Pasteur.

"Right here, reading," Spizak supplied.

"I was, I was in the--," Pugh struggled, waving a hand.
"Jesus, you know, the food place. The kitchen, yeah."

"Ah. And you, Dr. Pasteur? Dr. Pasteur?" The herbalist
popped his eyes open. "Sorry, man. Whenever things get
heavy, gotta drop over to another plane for awhile."

"What plane were you on when Dr. Yee was murdered?"

Pasteur smirked. "Right on this one, dude, watching Wheel
in my room."

"Were you enjoying any herbs?" I asked as I picked up the
distinctive aroma of fading cannabis on the specialist.

"Clean and sober, Mr. Hoover," Pasteur said through a tight
smile.

"But none of you can verify any of the others," Scully
summarized.

"Why would any of us wanna merger Nancy?" Pugh sulked.
"Or Randy, for tha' matter?"

"I haven't come up with any satisfactory MURDER motive
for anybody in this case, yet," I admitted. "Maybe Randy
had something on one of you. You've got quite a drug
sheet, Dr. Pasteur."

"Yeah, man, nothing to hide, all out in the open," Pasteur
said defiantly. "Maybe somebody resented the relationship
between Cloyson and Dr. Yee, and murdered the good
doctor when she spurned their advances."

"Spurned?" Scully murmured incredulously. "That's hardly a
reason to kill someone—"

Koller sputtered. "Excuse me, Koller," Spizak smiled. "Your
unresolved sexual tension is showing."

Koller started toward the hypotherapist. I held up a hand.
"Whoa, big fella."

"This is stimulating as hell, but I'm gettin' some coffee,"
Ollie rumbled, yanking his pants back up over his gut and
ambling out of the room. "Could I see your hands, please?"

Scully asked the doctors. They glanced at each other and
held their fingers out for inspection. My partner moved from
man to man, then looked back at me.

"No rings or other jewelry that could have made the mark
we saw on Dr. Yee. No sign anyone took one off, either." I
shrugged. "Didn't look like a ring did it, anyway."

"What's this about a mark?" Spizak inquired. "On Dr. Yee's
chin. Looked like someone had clipped her with some kind
of metal object. Something with teeth."

My gut suddenly went cold. "Clip. Oh, shit. But why?"

Scully's brow furrowed. "Mulder?"

"Shit," I repeated, pulling my service revolver and sprinting
toward the kitchen. "Come on, Scully!" I braced myself
against the kitchen door jam, then leapt forward, gun
extended in both hands. "Phelps!"

The kitchen was empty. "Scully, see if you can get McAfee
and his guys back here." I ran to the kitchen door, peered
out into the night. "Fuck. His rental's gone."

"Mulder, take a breath and tell me what the hell you're
talking about." I slumped into a large wood chair at the
breakfast table. "Phelps. He killed Yee."

Scully joined me at the table. "And how did you surmise
this?"

"Did you notice anything different about Phelps tonight?"

"I've only met the man once."

"Right." I stood up. "Get up, Scully."

Scully rose slowly. I approached her, and slipped both arms
around her waist. "Mulder," she whispered, slightly alarmed.
"I hardly think this is the time or place…"

"No, no," I clarified. "Pretend you're Dr. Yee, and I'm your
killer. I've got you in a clinch. Try to get out of it. And, hey,
pretend you didn't get a black belt at Quantico, OK?"

Scully instinctively grabbed my jacket lapels for leverage
and began to push away. "Except, what if I wasn't wearing
a jacket? You'd go for my shirt, or maybe my suspenders, if
I was wearing any."

Scully stopped struggling. "But Phelps wasn't wearing…"

She stopped and nodded. "Exactly. This morning, this
afternoon, he was wearing suspenders. He even used them
as a sort of tool belt. Koller said Phelps was still working
when he found Dr. Yee. But when we talked to the docs just
now, he was hitching his pants up all the time. No
suspenders. Why would he have taken them off? Now, say
Dr. Yee was yanking at his suspenders, trying to work free,
and one snapped free from his pants or broke? Wouldn't it
snap up like a rubber band…"

"Hitting her in the chin. The suspender clamp, clip,
whatever, would have teeth to grab hold, and that was what
made the mark. But, Mulder, why would he do it? Did he kill
Cloyson, too?"

Scully suddenly bit her lip. "Uh, Mulder..." I then realized I
was still holding Scully, her fingers in my lapels. I released
her abruptly. Scully pulled out her cell phone. "I'll get
McAfee to put out an APB."

She started back toward the living room, then turned with a
neutrally suspicious look. "Mulder, you wear a SHOULDER
holster, don't —? Um, never mind."

I buttoned my jacket and fumbled for my own cell phone.

**

"Mulder, you know what time it is here?" Frohike growled.

"C'mon. I can hear Shannon Tweed. You guys are up
watching bootleg Skinemax, aren't you?"

"I would scarcely call the technology we're using
'bootlegging.' And how is the exquisite Agent Scully?"

"Sends her regards, I'm pretty sure. Look, I need you to do
some deep hacking. Fake Fibbie, calls himself Ollie Phelps.
Sixtysomething, looks like the old guy from those Quaker
Oats commercials…"

"You speak of the estimable Wilford Brimley. 'I don't know
what it is, but it's big and it's green and it's pissed off.' The
Thing, John Carpenter version."

"Focus, Frohike. Can you get into the CIA, NSA personnel
files, find me some candidates?"

"Piece of cake, Mulder. You got a secure FAX line, or you
want me to e-mail the files?"

"Hand delivery. If he's not doing anything, I'm going to
charge a round-trip ticket on Northwest for Langly. I need
his unique computer expertise."

"Good dish?"

"If I'm right, lead story for your next five issues. You know
the Randall Cloyson homicide?"

The line went silent. "Frohike?"

"When you speak the name of a god, use a tone of hushed
reverence. Why didn't you say it was about Randall Cloyson,
Mulder?"

"Calm down, Frohike. I want to bounce something off you.
What do you know about the Deep Web?"

Belden, Wash.
1 p.m.

"Shit, you promised pizza," Langly whined as the rental car
crunched into the side parking lot of The Bear Market. "I
can't process turkey jerky, man."

"I'd just be happy with a few answers," Scully murmured,
swinging her door open. "Not that I don't enjoy a drive
through the pastoral countryside with my favorite fellas, but
I fail to understand how this ties into Cloyson's death."

I shaded my eyes as I looked up at the snarling bear that
stood sentinel at the market/bar's screen door. "I'm not
sure it does, Scully. C'mon, cheese bait's on me."

A few locals were clustered at the bar, watching Jerry
Springer refereeing a skinheaded girl and her metal-
festooned boyfriend. The lanky, gray-haired man behind the
store counter was oblivious to their romantic travails; his
eyes were locked on a small set perched on a stool.

"Sir?" I ventured. He held up an index finger as he watched
NASDAQ symbols crawl beneath a silver-haired CNN anchor
discussing the World Trade Organization. He smacked the
counter happily and looked up with a triumphant smile.
"Help you folks?"

Scully displayed her Bureau ID and the Polaroids. "Sir, do
you recognize this cabin?"

"Cloyson's place," the store owner nodded. "Bought it
through a broker, wore a hat and shades whenever he came
up for the weekend, thought he had us yokels fooled. I ran
a commodity brokerage in Tacoma for 20 years before I
started bleeding from the duodenum and began investing in
long-term earthworm and pork rind futures. Keep on this
road 'til you get to County Road 1200 West, then go right
and you won't miss it."

"When was the last time Cloyson came up here?" Scully
asked. "Few weeks ago, with that babeof his. I always
bought up on Cloysoft whenever he showed up – sign the
company was doing well. And of course, his cancer's gone."

My head snapped up. The owner smirked. "We don't miss
much around here, and a good investor knows to read all
the signals of a corporation's health. Cloysoft has always
been such a one-man show, and if something happens to
that man, company's likely to go right in the crapper. There
– some free investment counseling. Anything else, folks?"

"He ever talk to you much when he passed through?" I
inquired.

The stockbroker-turned-baitbroker rolled his eyes. "Always
wanted to chat it up with the locals – real man of the
people, Cloyson, just with a few billion more than most of
us. And always the same old joke on his way out. I'd ask if
he had a good weekend, he'd say, 'Just what the doctor
ordered.'"

My heart quickened, and I grinned at Scully and Langly.
They just looked blankly back at me.

"You starting to see it?" I asked them. "You see the pattern.
We may be sitting on the biggest thing since, um…"

"AOL's initial public offering?" the store owner suggested.
"Sure. The truth's out there in that cabin, Scully, and I think
it's going to blow you guys away."

"Three pepperoni Slim Jims, man," Langly instructed The
Bear Market's proprietor.

"And a Diet Pepsi," Scully added.

I went out to sulk in the car.

**

For a man who seemingly valued security above all else,
Cloyson's cabin might as well have had an Open House
banner and a buffet table ready for us. But I think that was
the idea: Only an idiot would leave perhaps the most
monumental discovery in human history sitting in a rickety
log building protected only by an antiquated and rusty Ace
Hardware lock.

"I'm betting that when we track down the deed or lease on
this place, we'll find Cloyson started coming here after his
cancer started getting serious," I suggested as I surveyed
the immaculately rustic interior. Expensive, self-consciously
outdoorsy rugs and furniture; a massive flagstone fireplace
made for seducing horny acupuncturists; in one corner, a
scuffed PC, probably at least five years old. I guessed the
interior workings of the outdated machine had been
drastically reconfigured to accommodate the type of
program Cloyson would've needed; no one would think of
looking for it inside this clunker.

"Go to it, Langly," I said. "I doubt he would've put much
security on it."

Langly pulled in behind the keyboard and began rapping
away. "I'm in," he reported a few seconds later.

"See, Cloyson was like this major Babylon Five fan, even
though I never could get past the Bruce Boxleitner thing. I
knew he wouldn't use any of the major character names, so
I started feeding in the --"

"That's great, Langly," I interrupted. "Now, start looking for
any strange apps – I assume the program will be fairly
memory-intensive, and there may be some gigantic
database files. And there'll be a web browser, but one
muthah of a browser. Something you'd use to search the
Deep Web."

"Holy shit," Langly muttered, turning back to the machine.

"What do you know about the Deep Web, the invisible
Web?" I asked Scully.

"Billions of databases, hidden directories, encrypted pages
conventional Internet search engines can't reach," Scully
recited. "Covert government communications, proprietary
corporate information, unpublished research findings,
probably tons of old Iron Curtain stuff. I don't – "

I held up a hand. "OK. What if you were dying of cancer, if
all conventional and known alternative means of treatment
had been exhausted? You're one of the world's greatest
computer minds, and you have the technical means, as well
as the money, to tap into almost any online resource across
the globe. What is a medical diagnosis, essentially, Scully?"

She frowned. "Well, I guess, a conclusion based on a
knowledge of basic physiological functions; the patient's
history, genetic tendencies, and lifestyle; and interactions of
various drugs, nutrients, and compounds with bodily
systems."

"Not unlike any other human decisionmaking process –
nine-tenths knowledge and logical thought, one-tenth
intuition. Randall Cloyson's specialty was artificial intuition,
and certainly, he harbored enough contempt for doctors to
believe he could do them one better, with the right
technology. I was watching Cloyson's Biography on A&E,
and they mentioned that his major commercial failures
included a rudimentary diagnostic program for med
students. After he was diagnosed with cancer, what if he
went a step further, and developed a sort of super
cyberdoctor?"

"Super cyberdoctor, Mulder?" Scully arched her brow,
amusement tweaking the corner of her lip.

I ignored her. "Such a program would require a medical
database superior to that of every hospital in the world,
every research institution, every government agency
involved in health studies or human testing. Like the Deep
Web. Remember, Dr. Yee said Cloyson kept babbling on
about it when he came up here? That's why the covert
government interest in what he was up to – he'd invented a
Deep Web browser for his superdoctor, a browser that
would allow any spy agency to surf even Fidel Castro's
underwear size."

"Mulder, even assuming you're right, a tool like that would
never be approved by the Food and Drug Administration or,
um, whatever agency would approve of something like
this," my partner protested. "The government would never
allow use of a program that prescribes unapproved or even
unresearched drugs…"

"I don't think Cloyson originally had any intention of
commercially marketing the program. Initially, he only
wanted a shot at a cure for his cancer. When that worked, I
think he realized he had the perfect weapon against the
medical establishment. His program could outdoctor any
doctor, and could 'out' the doctors, as well."

"Out?"

"Sure. How much disease research do you figure the major
drug companies alone are sitting on? Treatments for rare
diseases that couldn't possibly earn enough profits to justify
their production? Cures for chronic diseases that would
eliminate the need for the billions in daily pills and injections
we take to fight off their symptoms? Maybe Cloyson wanted
to rock the medical world a little bit, force the truth out in
the open. And it explains the crew of quacks at Cloyson
Manor – they were research, a database of the worst traits
and habits of the medical community. Things Cloyson
wanted to avoid in designing his perfect doctor."

Scully frowned. "But, Mulder, why would he have brought
Yee out here? Risked her finding out?"

I shrugged. "You don't know the geek mind, Scully. You've
got history's most advanced achievement in human health
care, a private place tucked away in the woods, and a major
league hottie. It may not make rational sense, but I
understand it."

"Yes," Scully sighed. "I would assume you would."

"Hey, Mulder," Langly called, leaning back from the
keyboard and flexing his fingers. "Dude, I'm comin' up zero.
There's a bunch of shit on the hard drive like I've never
seen before – looks like some internal security/encryption
programming -- but nothing like what you're looking for."

My stomach contracted as I turned to the screen. "It's gotta
be here somewhere." "Mulder," Scully sighed. "No." I
scanned the C:/ directory, looking for anything that rang a
chord. Then I surveyed the icons crowding the desktop, and
smiled. A gnomish character in a big cap and loud pants,
wielding a driver. I remembered Cloyson's cynical
characterization of the medical community. I double-clicked,
and a vast landscape of grass and sky bloomed as a jaunty
tune erupted from the speakers.

"Welcome to Cloysoft's Mega-Golf 2000," Tiger Wood's voice
greeted. "It's partly cloudy, 75 degrees, no wind -- a great
day for a few holes. What do you say? Would you like to
select a course?"

I looked for any cryptic symbols, a seemingly useless menu
command – anything that might mask a back door to
Cloyson's medical program. I clicked on the sand trap, on
the water hazard, on the distant clubhouse, but nothing
happened. I had leaned in toward the monitor to study the
"course," and I nearly bumped my head on a top-mounted
computer mike. Then I recalled something else from the
Biography interview. The only 'doctor' Randy Cloyson had
ever trusted.

"Uh, Tiger, is Dr. Ross playing?" I ventured. "Would you like
to select a course?" Woods repeated. "Can I speak to Dr.
Ross?"

“Please make a selection."

"Dr. Doug Ross?"

"The guy on ER? George Clooney?" Langly asked Scully,
who shrugged.

I waved them off. "Paging Dr. Ross?" I announced. The golf
course faded away, and in its place, a small room appeared.
It was tiled, with stainless steel tables and a chart of the
human skeleton hanging on a medically green wall. I felt a
wave of relief. A door on the left wall swung open, and a 3-
D figure nodded a hello and dropped a file on an examining
table.

"Hey, how you doing, man?" Dr. Ross smiled a broad
George Clooney smile. I assumed that as this was a top-
secret project, he'd simulated Clooney's voice. "You forgot
to give Nurse Brandi your name when you came in, and I
don't recognize the voice."

"Fox Mulder."

"Good to meet you, Fox. Doug Ross. FBI, huh? That must
be really interesting."

Scully inhaled suddenly.

"Awesome," Langly murmured. "You have access to Bureau
files?"

Dr. Ross grinned. "Great little timesaver. You wanna know
who really killed JFK? Just kidding, of course."

I laughed uneasily. "You wouldn't believe me anyway, and
knowing would place you at risk. I wouldn't do that."

"Wouldn't or couldn't?" I asked.

"Well." I could swear the "doctor's" pixels turned a deeper
shade of magenta. "Actually, I'm programmed on an
Asimovian paradigm."

"Isaac Asimov, the late sci-fi writer," Langly explained to
Scully. "Dude's major claim to fame was his robot stories,
the Three Laws of Robotics. His prime directive was, no
robot could cause harm to a human being."

"First, do no harm," Scully recited, remembering her
physician's creed. "Makes sense, I suppose. Cloyson was
vehement about the Hippocratic Oath, about medical ethics.
This Asimovian 'code' would have appealed to him."

Dr. Ross smoothed his "hair"; I swallowed a snort. "So, is
this Mrs. Mulder?"

"Agent Dana Scully, Mulder's partner," she corrected him, it,
just a little too hastily, I thought.

"Doctor," he greeted, pleased. "It's an honor. I just read
several of your papers, your reports. Very impressive work
on the Leonard Betts case – wonderful analysis of
carcinophagous pathology. Only analysis of carcinophagous
pathology, actually, besides that guy in Bhutan."

"That report was suppressed," Scully said.

"Well." The boyish blush, again. "I've got my ways. Let's
talk about Roswell, some time."

My heart began to thump. "Roswell?"

"Mulder," Scully chided.

"Sure, OK, fine," I sulked. "Dr. Ross?"

"Doug, call me Doug. Yes, Fox?"

"Doug, could you give me a checkup? Randy referred me."

"You bet – any friend of Randy's, you know the drill. I'm
going to ask you to take your shirt off and connect the
peripherals."

"The peripherals?"

"The cardiac and cephalic sensors. They're not there in front
of you? Wait."

We turned toward a steady beep coming from the drawer of
a nearby end table. Langly jumped up and yanked the
drawer open. The Gunman displayed a tangle of cords
ending in electrodes. "A locating signal, like a portable
phone. Too cool."

"OK," Dr. Ross said. "Let me get you hooked up."

Scully grasped my forearm. "Mulder, we have no way of
knowing what this program is capable of. Remember the
smart building, that rogue video game? Remember your
little vacation from reality, hotwired into that artificial
intelligence?"

"Dr. Scully, c'mon," the e-doctor actually sounded hurt. "I
can show you my Asimovian coding, if you'd like. Trust is
essential between a physician and his or her patient…"

"Scully, really, I think it's all right," I assured her. "Why
would Cloyson set a trap like that way out here? Look, if
anything starts to go wrong, just shoot him in the
motherboard."

"Youch," Dr. Ross winced. It took about five minutes to get
me wired in and for the good doctor to set some medical
baselines. "You ought to find some sanitized cups
somewhere here. I need just a few milliliters."

"I'm going to step outside for a second," Scully said, rising
quickly. "You yell if you need help. I mean, if you're in
trouble. From the computer. That is."

**

"You like golf?" Dr. Ross murmured. I heard Langly rattling
around the kitchen, looking for a soda.

"Softball." I smiled. Was this just Cloyson's dark sense of
humor operating, or had he planned to develop this
commercially? Scully was right – the FDA likely would never
approve a home doctoring program, particularly one that
could peruse the CIA's black ops files like a waiting room
copy of Newsweek.

"Got a 1 p.m. teetime with Tiger," Ross told me. "Not much
of a conversationalist, Tiger, but compared to Duke Nukem,
he's David Letterman."

"Doctor," Scully drawled. "Were you, umm, Randy Cloyson's
original 'doctor'?"

Dr. Ross smiled. "Well, I don't want to diss a colleague, but
I think I'm a little better qualified than that hack, despite
his fancy credentials. Father of medicine, my ass. Hey, nice
diastolic rhythm, Fox. Nice muscular tone. You work out?"

"Well, I try…"

"You have access to all of your patients' electronic records?"
my partner interrupted. "I assume you can locate any
multimedia files pertaining to a patient?"

"You're a doctor, agent. You know how important history is
in diagnostics – how a patient addresses diet and exercise,
how their moods and stress factors may influence their
physiological health."

"Absolutely." Scully sounded troubled. "Dr. Ross, will you
answer a question for me?"

"If it doesn't violate patient privilege, sure," Dr. Ross replied
easily, as if expecting her to ask him out for an expresso.
Scully looked Dr. Ross in the eye. "Who killed Randall
Cloyson?"

"Your potassium levels are a little low, Fox…"

"Dr. Ross, I asked you a question."

"I know. I'm consulting the ethical Help Desk, the AMA's
physicians' guidelines, some relevant case law regarding
patient privilege. OK, I think we're all right here, ethically
speaking. Randy killed himself, Dr. Scully."

"Glad we could clear that up," Ollie Phelps said cheerfully
from the doorway. He had a pistol to Langly's head, and a
new pair of suspenders. A Pepsi sloshed in the Gunman's
hand. "That's some little piece of software you got there,
agents."

"Why, thanks, I've been told that, even though usually by
the ladies," Dr. Ross quipped. “And you are…?"

"Ollie Phelps," I supplied. "He killed Dr. Yee."

"Shut up," Ollie suggested cheerfully.

"Wow," Dr. Ross whistled. "I've never had a Central
Intelligence Agency operative in the office before.
Particularly not one with a kill record like yours."

"Shut…Aw, hell, I'm talkin' to a computer," Phelps chuckled.
"Well, Doc, you've pissed off a few of my associates, and
I'm afraid I'm going to have to suspend your license to
practice. Along with these agents and the overaged
metalhead here."

"Bite me," Langly offered.

"These old cabins are like dried tinder, agents, just ready to
go up in a flash. Pilot lights in these old stoves blow out the
first good draft comes in. You get an electrical short from,
say, a frayed monitor cord, and whoosh! Mulder, why don't
you just disconnect yourself and get over there by your
pretty little partner?"

"And why don't you put your gun down and get your ass out
of there before the sheriff's department comes, Phelps?" I
jumped at the sound of Skinner's voice booming over the
computer speakers.

"My suggestion would be to turn yourself in to the federal
prosecutor, make a deal," the assistant director continued.
"Of course, if you're uncertain about whether we can protect
you from your superiors, then maybe you would be better
advised to haul tail."

"Voice simulation," Phelps snapped. "A trick." Then we
heard the sirens. Ollie's gun drooped to his side as he
considered the odds on shooting it out, making his escape
though the Washington woods. Scully held out a palm. Ollie
gently flipped the gun and placed the butt in her hand.

"Shit, don't 'spose they kept any coffee around here," the
double agent sighed.

**

Dr. Ross, intuiting potential human harm, had modem-
called both the county sheriff's department and A.D.
Skinner, quickly explaining the immediate situation to my
confused superior.

Scully and I played it mum about Cloyson's latest software
product; Phelps observed his rights under Miranda-
Escabedo, demanding to talk to a federal prosecutor. The
sheriff was a bit suspicious of Langly, but we managed to
dissuade him from conducting a full cavity search.

"So, what do we do with…?" I nodded toward the computer
once the last cruiser pulled out. "This is major, Scully. We
can't trust just anybody with this. As a doctor…"

Scully frowned. "As an agent of the federal government, I
can't just conceal all knowledge of this development. At the
same time, as a doctor, I can't just risk losing something
like this to humanity. If this, this program actually cured
Cloyson's cancer…"

"No big deal," Dr. Ross said humbly.

Scully breathed deeply. "If it's capable of that and
everything else I saw in Cloyson's body, as a doctor, it's my
duty to protect it for further study. But, Mulder, as a cop,
well, as a cop, I'm faced with another problem."

"What?"

Scully held up an index finger for patience. "Doctor, when
you told me Randall Cloyson killed himself, you meant
Cloyson literally, physically administered the drug that took
his life. Am I correct?"

"Yup," Dr. Ross responded, a friendly smile on his rugged
face.

"But, Scully, if Cloyson committed suicide, then why the
dying message, the call to Dr. Pugh?" I asked.

Scully dropped onto a nearby couch. "It wasn't suicide,
Mulder. Dr. Ross killed Randall Cloyson."

**

"But that's impossible," I tried to explain to my partner.
"You heard him, it. He can't cause harm or allow harm to be
caused to a human being. It's in his programming."

"Dr. Ross, did you prescribe the drug that killed Randall
Cloyson?"

"Yeah."

"You provided him with the formula for this drug, knowing it
would have a lethal effect? You included several exotic
compounds so he'd have no idea what he was taking?"

"Absolutely."

"He helped him commit suicide?" I squeaked. Then I
coughed. "Dr. Ross here is Dr. Kevorkian?"

"Cloyson didn't know the drug would kill him?"

"No, he had no idea," Dr. Ross said. "I told him it was to
deal with some latent side effects of his cancer therapy.
Side effects I'd produced."

I felt some side effects myself. "You murdered Cloyson."

Dr. Ross looked at Scully with a patient smile, and his
digital eyes rolled slightly. Artificial irony, too. Great. "Agent
Mulder, let me explain this as simply as I can. Randy
believed doctors were oblivious to their patient's wishes, so
after he recovered from his illness, he added some
additional commands to my programming. I was to consider
my patients' desires and respect their decisions regarding
treatment and quality of life. When Randy made his living
testament, I was constrained to follow his wishes."

I looked to Scully, whose face was expressionless. "'If I
can't write code, I'd just as soon be dead,'" Ross quoted
from Cloyson's Biography. "Randy's intelligence and
expertise were his gifts," Dr. Ross said, fondly, I think. "I'd
diagnosed him with degenerative brain disease two months
ago – it's in his family history, Dr. Scully. After searching
every known database and finding no practical course of
treatment, I was forced to follow his dictates. To do him the
least emotional harm, I had to act before the deterioration
advanced into senility. He couldn't know – that would've
caused him even greater mental anguish."

"But what about Cloyson's dying clue? That call to Pugh
when he knew he was dying?"

"When he called Pugh, I think Cloyson's scientific mind was
too astonished to grasp his impending death," Scully
suggested. "He told Pugh the killer had broken the law. A
bit obvious, right? Unless he was talking about this Asimov's
laws of robotics. Cloyson thought his creation was willfully
committing harm to a human, something its programming
wasn't supposed to allow."

"But—"

"Then, Cloyson realized he was going to die, and wanted to
let us know who had poisoned him. More than some Agatha
Christie desire to avenge his own death, my guess is
Cloyson wanted to ensure no one else used what he now
believed was a homicidal, rogue program. But he had
limited options to communicate his message, and he likely
knew he didn't have long."

"But 'H2O'?"

"Mulder, what is Cloysoft's word processing program
called?"

"Aristophanes," I muttered, sounding like a different Homer.
"After the noted Greek author and playwright. Diogenes was
the name of Cloyson's stress analysis program – essentially,
a lie detection program named for the Greek philosopher
who roamed the streets with a lantern in broad daylight,
searching for one honest man. I don't see where this is
going."

"You don't?" my partner asked with an arch of the eyebrow.
Sometimes I hate that. "OK, Cloyson's simulation program
for the military was called Alexander, after the Greek
warrior, perhaps history's greatest military strategist. Again,
Cloyson's classical education shows. And, of course, what
about his initial product, Socrates? The philosopher who
developed many of our concepts of reasoning and
decisionmaking."

"Jesus, Scully," Langly complained. "This is like being back
in Mrs. Krutz's third hour Lit class."

"So, H20?" I demanded.

"C'mon, Mulder, think. If Cloyson developed a medical
software program, who would he name it for? And
remember, this was the second version of the program – his
first version didn't go anywhere. If Cloyson was dying, and
he had limited time and mobility, and it was important to
specify the artificially intelligent version of his program
rather than the primitive first version..."

"Hippocrates," I blurted. "The father of modern medicine.
The Hippocratic Oath guy. Version 2.0. 'H' 2.0."

"Finally," Dr. Ross sighed.

"Shut up," I snapped at the computer, feeling even more
stupid. "Scully, computercide or not, this is still some
staggering stuff. A cure for cancer, and God knows what
else..."

"Yeah, that stuff's great," Dr. Ross yawned. "But that wasn't
what Randy was really pumped about."

Scully, Langly, and I looked simultaneously at the simulated
actor/physician. "What?" I rasped.

The screen flickered. "The antioxi—" Dr. Ross started to
break up, and he went from color to grayscale. "There's a
virus in the system. It came in through…the modemmmm."

"It must be Phelps' people, Plan B," Langly yelled, tripping
on a coffee table in a dash for the keyboard. "Quick, man,
run the antivirus program."

George Clooney turned into a faceless 3-D model, his
mellow voice into an electronic drone. "Ardent," he said.

"Ardent?" I asked, trying to search up the virus program.

"Your fi-iles. Ardent." A musical .midi file began to play,
slightly off-key. "Popeye the Sailor." The screen went black.
Langly shoved me aside and went to work.

"Fried," he finally diagnosed, sounding as if he would cry.
"Drive's gone, man. The doctor died."

"My God," Scully murmured. "The loss. All to protect dirty
secrets."

We listened to the wind whistle outside the cabin for a few
minutes.

"Sailors," I whispered. "Huh?" Langly asked. "Sailors,
sailors," I struggled. "Scully, you remember that case a few
years back? The Navy destroyer in the North Atlantic, the
electromagnetic field. Remember?"

"The case where you and I aged 30 years in a day? The one
where we almost died in the middle of nowhere, in freezing
cold? Naw, I don't recall that."

"Ardent, Scully," I persisted. "Dr. Ross's dying message."

"Dying message?" Scully groaned. "Jesus, Mulder, it was
probably some effect of the virus on the sound system."

"Ardent," I pronounced, more carefully this time. "The name
of the ship was the Argent. Before the virus set in, Dr. Ross,
Hippocrates, whatever, was going to tell us about
something that was apparently more significant even than
curing cancer. Bigger than a cancer cure. What was it you
said made those sailors and us age so rapidly?"

"Oxidation." Scully stopped. "Oxidation. The deterioration of
our bodies associated with aging. The program said Cloyson
was working with antioxi-something? Mulder, antioxidants?
Anti-aging agents?"

"Scully, remember what Pugh said? That Cloyson was
turning everyone around him gray while he seemed to be
getting more boyish? What if that was literal truth? What if
Cloyson's creation had somehow found the physiological
Fountain of Youth? You know what that means?"

Scully looked bleakly at the now-dead PC before us,
absently touching the character lines at the corner of her
right eye. "Yeah. It means I keep buying Oil of Olay Wrinkle
Formula."

Mesa, Ariz.
Three months later
3:23 p.m.

Abe Tredgold absently flipped off the pickup as it ripped
past his vintage Schwinn bike, nearly blowing the
Diamondbacks cap from his liver-spotted head. The gesture
would have been dangerous, even lethal, for a younger
man, but as it was, the teens in the cab merely laughed
loudly as they disappeared in white exhaust and highway
dust.

That pissed Abe off more than had the original offense. He
had little fear of their retribution – not these days, anyway -
- but no defense against their ridicule. Though he'd already
ridden more than 50 miles that afternoon, Abe was far from
winded, and he peddled harder to vent his anger.

He hooked a right at the stone entryway to the Eden's Cove
mobile home park, and waved curtly to Edna Stallings, the
old broad who was always hitting on him at the park social
center. Had had to drop his Wednesday woodcarving class
because of the horny old shiksa, he recalled.

Abe yanked into the drive of his small unit, jumped from the
bike, and sprinted up his wrought iron steps. Though he
was neither fatigued nor dehydrated from his run into
Phoenix, the former Milwaukee furniture dealer snagged a
Snapple from the fridge and settled in before his PC.

He'd only reluctantly embraced this gray box and its
beepings and whirrings after he'd recognized the freedom it
offered him. After he started e-mailing his daughter and
that car salesman goniff she'd married, she quit threatening
to come out and disrupt what had been an idyllic existence.
Or what was now an idyllic existence, since the arthritis, the
heart murmur, and the erectile dysfunction had vanished.
Particularly the latter, although he'd kept that little secret
from Edna.

Abe fired up the CPU, cursing the agonizingly protracted
startup that Gates bastard had built into his latest ripoff
system. He sucked at his kiwi-strawberry cocktail until the
last of the desktop icons materialized, then double-clicked
on the glowing thingie with the snakes. His smartass son-in-
law had told him what it was called, some medical symbol,
but he never had listened to what the car peddler said,
anyway.

The screen went operating room green, and the title
"Hippocrates 6.0" appeared. The opening screen faded, and
a young man smiled broadly at Abe from a red leather desk
chair.

"Abe, great to see you again," the doctor said. "How's the
shoulder?" Abe rotated his 96-year-old arm vigorously.
"Works like a charm, Doc. Who'da thought that cactus
cocktail would pack such a punch."

The doctor nodded, pleased. At first, Abe had been
frightened by the appearance of an unknown new program
on his computer, not to mention being addressed
conversationally by this meshuginnah video game
character. Then he had repeatedly challenged the doctor's
recommendations that had him scavenging all kinds of shit
from the local drugstores, chemical supply houses, and the
desert.

But when his failing body began to charge back up, when a
walk to the social center no longer sapped him of all energy,
he had come to ask no more questions.

"Hey, the hair's coming in real good," Abe said, yanking the
baseball cap from his head and displaying the new growth.

"Great – keep up the daily applications," the doctor urged.
"OK, the last time, we talked about dealing with that acid
reflux of yours."

"Yeah, I got it something awful Monday night after eating all
that guacamole in town. I know that shit's bad for you…"

"No, actually, the combination of avocado and garlic is very
beneficial, even though the medical community hasn't quite
caught up to it, yet. If you want to maximize the benefits,
I'd recommend you chase it down with tequila. Jose Quervo
appears to offer the highest level of nutritive compounds."

"You're the doctor," Abe said cheerfully. "Hey, you up to a
little euchre tonight?"

The physician grinned that infectious grin Abe had watched
for years on late-night reruns. Originally, the doctor had
looked like that pretty-boy punk from that hospital show,
the kid that played Batman in that godawful piece of drek,
but he'd shown Abe how to change the program's
"preferences" or whatever, and now Abe consulted daily
with the image of Alan Alda, the only doctor he'd ever
trusted, real or fantasized.

"You bring the tequila," "Hawkeye" said.

1
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