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“It’s right over this next ridge,” Mulder said, as Scully rolled her eyes and trudged along behind him. “The lights appear every night at midnight for the last two nights, and if we’re lucky, we aren’t too late to see it for ourselves.”
“Yes, Mulder, I know. It’s the only thing you’ve been able to talk about for the entire four hour drive out here, and the ensuing half hour hike up this mountain. When has finding anything on one of your wild goose chases resulted in anything remotely resembling luck?”
Mulder held out his hand to stop Scully from traipsing right over the top of the hill and into the clearing beyond. He tugged the sleeve of her coat to pull her down behind a large boulder, not even bothering to check for poison oak, or rattlesnakes, or anything else that might mundanely inconvenience them before Mulder’s “aliens” even had a chance to show up. As soon as he considered them well enough hidden, he checked his watch.
“Ten minutes to spare,” Mulder said, as if it was an achievement in itself. He pulled out a flask of coffee and handed it to Scully. “Wanna toast the occasion?”
Before she could even reply, a sizzling sound echoed around the little dell before them and a strange string-shaped light split the clearing down the middle, dancing and shimmering and illuminating the entire bowl of the concealed little valley.
“Well, that’s not at all what I was expecting,” Scully said, leaning over the boulder they hid behind and squinting through the undulating glow.
“I told you it wasn’t the usual lights from the sky sort of report,” Mulder said, almost smug that he’d managed to intrigue his partner out of her skepticism yet again.
“Fine, but what could possibly be making… that?” Scully said, pointing at it. “It’s not electricity, or lightning. It’s not burning the plants nearby or…” they both watched intently as a lone moth flew toward the strange light. Rather than being zapped dead, the moth simply disappeared before reappearing moments later, a little wobbly in flight for a moment but otherwise apparently entirely unharmed. “Yeah, we need to collect that moth,” she said, making to get up before Mulder tugged her back down again.
“I think the moth’s a lost cause, Scully. I don’t think we’re gonna be able to question it, anyway.”
Before they could start arguing about scientific testing and the futility of analyzing a single moth for chemical or molecular changes after its journey into the strange light, something even weirder happened. A head— a human head— popped out of the light. It glanced around like it was searching for something for a second, and then even weirder than that, it spoke.
“They’re not here,” the head said, and sounded disappointed.
A second later, an entire body stumbled out behind it, as if someone had shoved an entire person out of the light. Several more figures walked through in the following moments.
“They all look human enough,” Scully said of the group, completely bewildered. “A teenager and three grown men. Maybe this isn’t extraterrestrial life, but whoever they are, they seem to have created some sort of transportation portal out of light.”
Mulder snorted. “This isn’t Star Trek, Scully. But I think we should probably try to talk to them.”
“Give ‘em a second,” one of the men in the group down below said. “You gotta assume they’re out there investigating us or some shit. Soon as they realize we’re not ET trying to phone home, and that we come in peace or whatever, they’ll wanna ask us where the hell we came from and how we got here.”
“Dean, that may be an oversimplification,” one of the other men said.
The man called Dean just shrugged and began pacing around the little clearing.
The tallest man in the group shook his head and tried to console the teenager. “Jack, it’s only been a couple days. They might need more time to show up. We don’t even know what they’re working on already, you know? We might not be top priority if they’re dealing with ghost ships or pyrokinetics or whatever.”
Mulder and Scully exchanged a shocked glance. Scully mouthed to him, “Ghost ship… pyrokinetic… we worked those cases… who ARE these people?”
“I think we gotta find out,” Mulder replied out loud, getting to his feet. Before Scully could stop him, he waved his arms and called out, “Hello? Jack? Dean? Sorry I didn’t catch the rest of your names…” He half jogged, half stumbled down the uneven hillside.
The man named Dean leaned in to mutter at his companion, “Whoa he looks just like Duchovney.”
The as-yet unnamed man at his side, incongruously wearing a long tan trenchcoat over a business suit while the other men wore more casual clothing, leaned in to Dean. “You and Sam were once mistaken for your doppelgangers in this universe, too.”
As Scully more carefully caught up, the three men waited patiently, while the teenager— Jack— looked practically ready to vibrate out of his skin with excitement.
“Agent Mulder?” Jack called out. “Agent Scully? Is it really you?”
“Depends who’s asking,” Mulder replied. “Do you come in peace?”
Dean laughed at that, and then replied, “He’s just a really big fan. Worst he’ll do is ask for an autograph.”
That stopped Mulder in his tracks. He stood there, frowning at the men as Scully caught up to him on the edge of the clearing.
“You’re a fan?” he asked, finally sounding skeptical. “Of the FBI.”
“No, not at all, really,” Jack replied. “Just of your work. You and Agent Scully both.”
“How do you even know anything about our work?” Scully replied. “It’s all classified. And barely even believable.”
It was the tall man’s turn to attempt to explain. “You see, in our universe, your lives are a tv show. And Jack just watched it for the first time. He gets really invested in his entertainment, and he’s got the power to find the universe where the characters are real, so…”
“Sammy,” Dean cut in. “We’ve been through this. That speech ain’t worked on smurfs, Dexter, or Mr. Spock. What makes you think it’ll work on the guy who’s convinced aliens are real and the chick who ain’t convinced anything’s real?”
Sam made a disappointed face at Dean and held a hand out toward the portal. “They just watched us walk into this field from a column of orange light. I think that’s enough to prompt some scientific questions.”
“Yeah, but you’re giving them looney tunes answers,” Dean replied.
“This entire situation is kinda looney tunes, Dean,” Sam said. “You think it would be easier to introduce ourselves? Hi, I’m Sam Winchester, this is my brother Dean, this is a retired angel of the Lord named Castiel, and this is Jack, better known as God. The God. Of everything. And he’s a big fan so we brought him on a field trip to an alternate universe where his current favorite tv show is real? What about that is believable?”
Mulder cleared his throat after watching this entire exchange. “Excuse me, are you saying that on the other side of that beam of light…”
“Portal,” all four of their visitors said in unison.
“Uh, okay, on the other side of that portal…” Mulder went on, exchanging a bewildered glance with Scully. She nodded at him, and then stepped forward, just a little closer to the portal.
“What Mulder is asking… There’s a whole alternate universe just through that portal?”
Jack nodded eagerly. “Billions of them, actually. Probably more. I haven’t even tried to count them all yet.”
Mulder and Scully exchanged another skeptical glance, and Scully swallowed hard, trying to wrap her head around that information.
“And… and you’re God?” she asked, touching the cross hanging around her neck.
Jack smiled at her. “Amazing, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, he hasn’t had the job long,” Dean added with a roll of his eyes. “Kid gets all the power in the universe to play with, and this is what he chooses to do with it. Field trip to let all his favorites know they’re doing a great job.”
Jack nodded emphatically, though. “It’s true. The last God enjoyed toying with his creation, playing games and hurting people. So I’m just doing what I can to be a better God.”
“He’s doing remarkably well,” Cas added with an approving, fatherly smile.
“Okay then,” Mulder replied. “God’s real, he travels with an entourage, and we’re apparently tv characters in an alternate universe. This is a totally normal series of things to learn on a remote hilltop in West Virginia in the middle of the night.”
“I’m sorry we weren’t actually aliens this time,” Jack replied confidentially. “They are real, though. At least in your universe.”
“But not in your universe?” Scully asked.
Jack shrugged. “Technically, they’re all my universes. And every universe is made of stories, which is why we get the fun overlap between fiction and reality, if you know what universe to travel to. But no, sadly, in the primary universe where Sam, Dean, and Cas live, there aren’t any aliens.”
“Yeah, but there are angels, demons, vampires, ghosts, leprechauns and evil clowns that eat people.” Dean added. “We got enough to worry about without little green men.”
“Wait, so if we’re a tv show there, are you guys a tv show here?” Mulder asked. “Because I’d watch that show…”
Sam snorted. “Yeah, but not for about what…” he looked around at Cas for clarification.
“I believe it won’t begin airing here for almost a decade,” Cas replied.
“Yeah, probably around 2005, 2006,” Sam said more confidently now. “At least that’s when the Supernatural books started coming out. They probably line up with the tv series here.”
Dean replied to Mulder and Scully directly, sounding really disgruntled with the information he conveyed.
“Yeah, the last God was a real dick. Screwed with our entire lives just to make us into his own live-action tv series. Put us all through Hell for like fifteen years just for kicks.”
“And Purgatory,” Sam added.
“Don’t forget the Empty,” Cas added with a shudder.
“And at least three apocalypses…” Dean threw in with a slightly haunted look before shaking himself off. “But at least that’s finished now.”
Mulder and Scully’s eyes went wide, and they exchanged another speechless glance.
“Okay, let me get this straight,” Mulder finally replied.
Dean snorted at that, and Cas elbowed him and gave him a quelling glance.
“Not only are you from an alternate universe, you’re from the future as well?”
Sam shrugged. “It’s 2022 where we came from in our universe. Timelines don’t mean much when you’re God, though.”
“Do…” Mulder gave Scully an eager, pleading glance before she shook her head and held out a resigned hand toward the portal and Mulder stepped closer. “Do you think I could get a peek at the future?”
“I don’t think it would make much difference,” Cas replied. “It’s not your universe. It’s not your future.”
“Plus the room we came from hasn’t had an update since like 1955. It looks more like the past than the future,” Dean added.
“And you drive a car from 1967,” Jack added. “So even driving them around wouldn’t really prove much different from the present.”
Sam perked up at that. “We do have these, though,” he said, pulling out his ipad, unlocking it, and handing it to Scully. “It’s a tablet computer. Just touch the screen to navigate. I’ve got the entire bunker archive on there, and the wifi should work this close to the portal.”
Scully tapped at the screen, looking through the volumes of books Sam had stored on the device before he reached over and opened a gallery of photos and videos showing their normal family life, from an alternate universe in the year 2022, just doing their normal everyday things with a kid who believed he was God.
It was so entirely unbelievable, but Scully held the evidence of it in her hands, and in these four people who’d appeared on this lonely hilltop in the middle of nowhere from a beam of dancing light.
She handed the tablet back to Sam in a daze, unable to even process any of what was happening.
“So,” Jack said, holding out a little notebook and a pen toward Mulder. “Do you think I could get your autographs?”
Mulder signed without a word, and handed the notebook to Scully. She also signed, but when she handed it back to Jack, she pulled her own notebook out of her pocket and handed it to Jack, as well.
“It’s a fair trade,” she replied when Mulder looked at her quizzically. “How often do you get to ask God for his autograph?”
Jack signed, delighted to do so, and then handed the notebook off to Sam. When Sam tried to hand it back to Scully, Jack shook his head and pushed the pen into Sam’s hand.
“You have to sign too, Sam. Same with Cas and Dean. We’re all equally important, and someday they’ll know why,” he replied with a little nod at Mulder and Scully.
“Well, that’s good news,” Mulder muttered. “Sounds like we’re surviving until at least 2005, then.”
“Hopefully much, much longer,” Jack replied with a grin while the rest of them left their autographs in Scully’s notebook.
Eventually Cas handed it back to her with a contrite little nod.
“Just remember,” Dean said. “Bigfoot’s a hoax. In every universe.”
Jack nodded apologetically. “Except for the Bigfoot Universe that only contains Bigfoot. My uncle thought it was hilarious.”
“Your uncle?” Mulder asked.
“The archangel Gabriel,” Cas replied as the portal behind him began to flicker and sputter.
Jack frowned. “I’d love to be able to stay longer, and I could make that happen, but not without altering the balance of the multiverse again. It’s time for us to go back where we belong now. Thank you for finding us. It’s truly an honor to meet you.”
“I think the honor’s ours,” Scully replied, nodding toward Mulder and elbowing him to reply.
“Yeah, thank you for this, I think. It’s been… whatever the opposite of enlightening is.”
Dean snorted. “Yeah, welcome to our lives.”
“So, what, now we just wait to tune in on Thursdays at nine, eight central in about a decade?”
“Something like that,” Sam said with a grin as Jack ushered them all back toward the portal.
They watched the four men walk back into the light. It flared briefly as each of them disappeared through it. Scully had to restrain Mulder from attempting to dive through after Jack vanished, but the moment Jack touched the light, the portal shrunk right out of existence anyway.
The two of them stood in the field for a few long minutes, listening to the sounds of the forest at night and trying to make sense of what had just happened.
“I think,” Scully said eventually. “I think maybe rather than filing a report on this one, we should get a stiff drink and try to forget this ever happened.”
“Are you kidding?” Mulder replied. “You’ve got God’s autograph, and you’re not gonna make a record of it?”
He grabbed the notebook out of Scully’s hand and looked at the rest of the signatures.
“He signed it, ‘Jack Winchester, aka God.’ And the others signed Sam, Dean, and Cas Winchester. So hey, now you know God’s surname. And you’re not entering it into the official record?”
Scully smiled to herself and put her notebook safely back in her pocket. “We’ll see what the fall television schedule looks like in a decade, and then I’ll consider it.”
She waved a hand up the hillside they’d stumbled down what felt like eons earlier, and Mulder trudged up ahead of her. They had a long walk and a long night ahead of them. Maybe some reasonable explanation for any of it would materialize like the mysterious portal had. Unfortunately, Scully knew better than that. She touched the cross around her neck again. This was probably one for her personal records rather than her official report.