"Okay. I'd like everyone to take a seat in the waiting room, except for...Mulder."
The five men looked nervously at each other before four of them trudged towards a row of seats. The last one, after throwing a futile pleading glance for help over his shoulder, faced his fate and entered the room.
"Please, take a seat Agent Mulder."
Mulder edged over to the uncomfortable looking chair and sat nervously on its seat.
He waited.
Five minutes passed.
He coughed politely.
The lady glanced up over her glasses then after a pause, put down the papers she had been studying intently, interlaced her hands professionally then smiled.
"You can relax, Agent Mulder. This is not an interrogation. We are just running routine tests to see if select characters still have the right personalities to fit their shows. We find sometimes that characters just don't work in their roles and they have to be placed in alternative shows that suit them better."
"Is that what happened to Ray from Due South?" asked Mulder timidly. "Did you...reallocate... him?"
The lady looked at him, confused.
"Ray's still in Due South." She paused in thought. "Oh, you mean the old Ray?" She shook her head sadly. "I'm afraid so, though I wish they would think of new character names for the replacements. It can get so confusing sometimes. The paperwork can be pure hell."
Mulder smiled sympathetically, then began to worry about his own problems again.
"You're not planning to ...reallocate...me, are you? I like it at the X-Files. It's the only show that can deal with my immense paranoia."
He stuck his bottom lip out in an impressive pout to gain sympathy. The lady nodded to herself approvingly, then wrote something on her pad of paper.
Mulder's paranoia perked its ears up.
"What did you just write? Did I say something wrong?"
The lady smiled to herself and wrote another note. She then turned the page over and ticked a box on the next piece of paper. After the scratching of her pen ceased she glanced up over her glasses again and smiled encouragingly.
"No, Mulder, you're going just fine. Remember - we are checking to see if your personality fits your character." She smiled widely. "Trust me, Agent Mulder - I haven't found any problems so far."
Mulder let his breath out slightly in relief, then looked at her suspiciously.
"Who are the 'we' that you keep referring to?" He settled into his favourite personality complex. "You keep mentioning that 'they' do this, and 'we' do that." He leaned forward in his chair eagerly. "Who do you work for? Is it the government?" He sat back suddenly in his chair. "It is, isn't it? This is a government conspiracy, isn't it? The personality tests are just a cover for an elaborate conspiracy. Yessss.... I should have seen it sooner."
The lady sat back in her chair and smiled to herself. She scribbled more notes down on the pad in front of her.
Mulder's paranoia hit point seven on the Rickter Scale.
"No! That's not it, is it?" he exclaimed suddenly. "The personality tests are genuine. You're using them to catalogue test subjects into those underground filing systems that I discovered. Keeping records of select experiments on human subjects to use as a kind of bargaining chip for when the aliens land and attempt to take over the earth. You're going to sell information on the personalities of billions of innocent humans - their strengths and their weaknesses. It will be in return for mass-planetary protection by technologically advanced alien cultures." He paused in shock. "You can't trust them! You will trade the information, then the aliens will know everything about us so we will be left vulnerable to attack when they turn on us and their devious ways are exposed! You will be destroying the human race as we know it!"
Mulder let out his breath in one great sigh of shock, and slumped back into his chair.
"My God. I should warn Scully."
Lost in his own land of possible realities and conspiracies, he failed to notice the lady ticking away at her sheet of paper. She smiled to herself again then reached over to her deck drawer and opened it slowly.
Mulder's paranoia planted a flag of triumph upon reaching 1.0 on the Rickter Scale.
"You're going to kill me now, aren't you?" he accused her. You have a gun in that drawer, and you're going to kill me because I found out the truth that I have been searching for, for so long. Your elaborate conspiracy has been exposed! You cannot bury the truth! If you kill me others will take my place!"
He jumped up from his chair, totally oblivious to anything but his own mental ramblings. Meanwhile, the lady's hand had frozen on the drawer handle, and suddenly she slowly pushed it shut again. Consulting her notes, she found the box labeled 'Inkblot test needed', and ticked 'No'. The lady's ticking reached the bottom of her page.
"Agent Mulder..."
There was no response. She paused in her notes long enough to watch the FBI agent attempt to mould an 'X' on the window out of bluetack. She smiled self-indulgently. Looking down at the final two boxes on her paper, she moved her pen to tick the one labeled 'PASS'.
She settled back into her chair, quite prepared to wait as long as necessary until Mulder noticed her presence again, whereupon she would dismiss him from the session.
She smiled proudly.
"I told them that he was the perfect choice for recruitment into the X-Files," she mumbled to herself.
Looking up again, she rose from her chair upon noticing that the FBI agent had begun to surface from his thoughts long enough to notice her presence. She smiled encouragingly at him, and directed the man out of the door and into the waiting room for recovery.
The remaining four members already seated in the waiting room all reacted to Mulder's return in their own ways. One man shot a dangerous glare at the lady and quickly checked to feel the security of his sword and the fifteen different multi-purpose world-destroying viruses hidden in his trenchcoat. The next man reached into his leather jacket to release the safety off his gun, before quietly unscrewing his left arm so no one could bash him up with it or cuff him to anything. The third man paused while brushing his long hair into a ponytail, then decided his eyebrows needed tending to before presenting himself to the lady. The last man just sat in the corner and watched with a knowing smirk on his face. Glancing over the room, he pulled two beers out of his coat and threw one to the distressed FBI agent before opening the other for himself.
The lady stepped forward and consulted a separate chart.
Looking up, she smiled.
"Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod - You're next."