#like i rewatched taxi driver for the first time in years and my brain is just full of half-formulated thoughts about it

[spectroscopes]

I forgot how much I enjoy being a film bro but honestly the best part of it this time around is actually just privately developing my opinions about a movie I just watched inside my own head or with a couple of cherished friends and not feeling like I have to contribute to the discourse or even have an especially solid take.

[myassbrokethefall]

untitled rm9sbg93zxjz post-ep

rated: B for blobfish, R for robots, D for dreams and S for Scott.

So as I mentioned I watched the episode last night while Somewhat Drunk after a work party, and I could barely follow what was happening. It was like some crazy dream I had. I woke up this morning and it FELT like a crazy dream I had had. So I ran with that.

I'm looking forward to rewatching, but as of now I've watched it one time, while (as I mentioned) kinda drunk. So I've probably gotten a bunch of stuff wrong, which is fine because that's how a dream would be anyway. I'm sure it will all make perfect sense when I watch it again. Uh, maybe.

I wrote this in like three hours (for me, that is INSANELY fast), after drinking coffee, so adjust your expectations accordingly.

The friendly cacophony of the diner envelops them, comfortable, the two of them (as so often) alone together in a crowd. Mulder likes sitting at the counter, a habit left over from his lonelier days. You feel like you're part of the busy hum of life if you're drinking your coffee while plates pass by your head and orders are yelled out around you and someone is making pancakes three feet away.

Scully's phone chirps, and she looks down automatically. It's a push notification for something or other, telling her to drink water, or stretch, or pay her gas bill, or something. She frowns at it, and flips it over. Smartphone-era Scully, he has found, can be perfectly summed up by her habit of first programming her phone to remind her to do things all day and night, and then getting annoyed and refusing to do the things at least half the time.

Something about the exchange, however, lights something up in his brain. "Scully," he says. "I had the craziest dream last night. Whoa. I just remembered."

"Yeah?" She forks a bite of scrambled egg into her mouth. "What kind of dream?" She lifts an eyebrow at him. Gone, thankfully, are the days when they would have to flirt with each other while pretending that wasn't what they were doing, held back by a mutual terror that Crossing The Line would somehow prove disastrous. He doesn't miss those days. At all.

"Not that kind of dream, G-woman." He squints, trying to piece it all together. "I remember...a bunch of computers were after us."

"Computers were after us? Meaning what? Chasing us? Physically?"

"Well...we angered them somehow. The computers. Like...all of them, I guess."

"We ANGERED them? ...Like with that case we had at the office tower way back when?"

"Actually, yeah, kind of. God, that case was weird. I haven't thought of that in years. My subconscious must be thinking about it. Yeah, we...Well, in the first part we were at this sushi restaurant..."

"You and me?"

"Yeah, but it was empty. It was only us. And we couldn't talk for some reason, I think? I forget why. So we were eating our sushi. It came on a...one of those trays like on a conveyor belt. But they brought us the wrong thing. Remember the blobfish picture?"

She laughs. Scully had chanced to see a picture of a blobfish on the internet some months ago and he wasn't sure he had ever, in their years and years together, seen her laugh so hard. It was one of the best things that had ever happened to him, frankly, watching the outsizedly hysterical reaction of Dana Scully MD, his serious scientist partner, to a picture of a lumpy, slimy, theatrically frowning fish on the internet. He had brought it up at every opportunity for weeks, renamed the wireless network at the house Blobfish Cove, found a way to work a reference to it into a meeting with Skinner, once printed out a picture of it and left it on Scully’s pillow, and watched in utter delight as she got the helpless giggles every single time. (Even the Skinner time. He hadn't even asked, just looked wearily at some point behind their heads for a few seconds before sighing and continuing on.)

"Don't tell me the blobfish was in your dream!"

"It was!"

"You're just saying that because you want me to laugh."

"No, Scully, I swear. The restaurant served us the blobfish as part of our meal, and you thought it was hilarious." Just like now. She's giggling delicately even as he talks. "But we didn't want to eat it. You had some objection."

"Of course! I could never eat it." She cackles. "I love that thing. If ever there was something to prove that God has a sense of humor..." She shakes her head. Blobfish. Mulder sends God a mental high-five.

"So I tried to take it back to the kitchen, but I couldn't find anybody. There was literally no one in the entire restaurant but us. Like no one even working there."

"Why were we at this restaurant?"

"I don't know, we were just there. It's a dream. Oh, I think maybe it was your birthday. But then later I remember it was June, so, I don't know. Anyway, we were leaving and I tried to pay at some payment machine and the machine asked me for a tip. And I got annoyed and I wouldn't tip it, because, it's a machine. You were scolding me about that."

"Which you probably dreamed because I was scolding you just the other day for that shitty tip you gave the pizza delivery guy." It’s an annoying habit of hers, every time he's told her about a cool dream he's had (which, to be fair, is kind of often): to immediately attempt to map every aspect of it onto a real-world cause, the more mundane the better. No respect for mystery or symbolism, Scully.

"Yes. Your scolding reached my subconscious, congratulations." She nods as if accepting a great honor. "So I was hitting 'no tip' on the thing, but then I couldn't get my credit card out. It was stuck. There was this whole part -- I think we got trapped in the restaurant?"

"With the blobfish?" Her eyes are crinkling happily.

"Yes, Scully, with the blobfish. I'm sorry the blobfish doesn't play an even more substantial part in this dream than it already does."

"I can't believe you dreamed that we were going to EAT the BLOBFISH."

"We weren't going to eat it! That was the whole point. We ordered it by accident or something but we didn't want to eat it."

"So we got trapped in the restaurant, then what?"

"Well, we went home, I guess, I forget how we got out but we did somehow, and you were gonna take a taxi to your apartment." He's pleased with himself for keeping his tone neutral when he mentions her apartment. Easier these days when she's spending more nights at the house than not, but still. "But there was no driver, it was like, one of those Google cars. And you didn't want to get in and you were about to argue with me but then you got in anyway, and the car took off like, EXTREMELY fast. I'm sure you were mad about that. And I don't blame you, because it was not safe. So I went home too -- "

"Did you also have a Google car?"

"No, I just drove home."

"Why didn't I just drive my car home?"

"I don't know. It's a DREAM, Scully. It's a dream where you didn't have your car with you for some reason and we also apparently lived in some near-future dystopia where we were imprisoned in a restaurant after being served a blobfish by robots." He pauses to watch her giggle. Never fails. "And after I got home I think I was trying to call my credit card company. Maybe it was something about my card getting stuck from the other part? I just remember this whole long part where I was on hold for a really long time."

"Probably because of that erroneous charge you had to call Citibank about last month, and you kept getting that horrible voicemail system."

"Yes. I'm sure it was from that. Anyway, I was on hold forever and I also had to keep calling back -- "

"Because of how the voicemail kept kicking you back to the beginning when you were calling Citibank."

"Scully. Yes, I'm sure that's why I dreamed about it. I didn't know you were paying that close attention. Anyway, it was annoying. And while I was doing that there were a bunch of drones chasing me."

"Drones?"

"Yeah, the little ones, like in the Olympics opening ceremony. In the house. They were on the stairs."

"How did drones get in the house?"

"I have no idea, but then I got worried about you for some reason and I guess I went to your place. And Scully, I got to your place and it was insane. It was like, some crazy executive suite or something. Or a super posh hotel. All modern and, you know, like designer-y. And you were mad when I got there because I guess I had sent you a Roomba? Like I ordered it for you as a joke and you were mad because you thought I was insinuating something about your housekeeping."

"You ordered me a Roomba?"

"Yeah, but when you opened it it chased your vibrator."

She looks delightfully flabbergasted. "Mulder!"

"It was trying to vacuum up your vibrator. That little pink one." He likes that one. Because she likes that one. "But your vibrator -- "

"Mulder, PLEASE stop saying 'vibrator' in a restaurant."

"It had somehow come to life. I don't know how."

"You mean it came to life beyond the act of," she coughs lightly, "vibrating?"

"I think so. It had a malevolent intelligence. I guess. So I guess the Roomba was trying to stop it? I don't know. And, it was some kind of off-brand Roomba because I remember you saying, why didn't you just get the Roomba brand, and I had no answer. I don't know why I ordered you an off-brand Roomba."

"You were probably being cheap."

"Probably."

"So which one was malevolently intelligent? The Roomba? Or the, the other thing?"

"I don't know. The Roomba was trying to mow down the vibrator. Maybe it was a 'the enemy of my enemy' situation. Anyway, Scully, this apartment, this place was a palace. I wish in real life you could hook us up with a place like that that government employees could afford. You obviously had some secret inside real-estate source. It was insane. You had this fancy fridge."

"Full of blobfish?" She smiles around her coffee cup.

"I didn't see inside it. Oh, but you had a note on your fridge to defrost chicken because Scott was coming over. Who is Scott, Scully?"

"My sexy marine-biologist slash realtor boyfriend. I didn't tell you about him?"

He forks her gently on the nose, causing her to jerk away like a surprised cat. She swipes at her nose, then licks her finger. It's real maple syrup, so she's got nothing to complain about.

"Well, Scott the world's leading blobfish authority slash real-estate virtuoso is gonna be disappointed when he comes over for chicken because then your apartment burned down."

"WHAT?" She steals a bite of his not-quite-finished pancakes. He knew she wouldn't be able to resist that maple syrup.

"Yeah, there was a gas fire or something. I forget how it happened, but then you and I were trying to escape and we did, I guess, and you still had your vibrator but then we had to throw it away because they were tracking us."

"Tracking us via my..." she drops her voice. "My vibrator? Mulder. This is a dream only you would have. Talk about paranoid fantasies that -- "

"ANYWAY, Scully, your luxurious apartment. Burned down. And we didn't even get to christen all the rooms. So we were running and we had to throw our phones away, and the vibrator, because it was tracking us. That was your idea, because you're smarter than I am even in my own dreams. So we threw it in a dumpster." She makes a disappointed noise. Scully loves that vibrator. God bless.

"It's OK, Scully, it was only a dream. So we were running away and we ended up in this, like...robot factory? Or something like that. Maybe a warehouse? But a bunch of robots started chasing us."

"It sounds like most of this dream is robots chasing us."

"It is. I've got some deep-rooted anxieties. So we were running around the robot factory, or whatever it was, and the robots were after us. But they were robot animals, kind of. Like a robo-dog, like -- "

"Like that Boston Dynamics video we saw?"

"I don't remember that."

"You were falling asleep on the couch when I showed you."

"Well, I guess I absorbed it on some level. Maybe that part happened before we threw out our stuff. I can't remember. You know how dreams are."

The waitress leans over with her coffee pot, a silent question, and Scully obligingly pushes the cup towards her. Mulder feels a warmth deep in his belly. She has nowhere to be right now, except here, with him. He nods at the waitress and she refills his mug as well.

"Can we have more half-and-half, please?" Scully asks, and the waitress nods and takes the little pitcher to refill. She loves her half-and-half. Sensual pleasures, his Scully.

"So then what happened?"

"Well, then at some point I realized, somehow, that the reason this was all happening was that I didn't tip at the sushi restaurant."

"You disrespected the blobfish, you mean?"

"Yes. I disrespected the blobfish, or the blobfish's, I guess, robot masters, and they summoned all their connected, artificial will to come after us. And they almost succeeded. We almost DIED, Scully."

"Because you cheaped out."

"Yes. You were right all along. We almost died because I was too cheap, plus you lost your amazing apartment. Before I had a chance to defile it with you."

"I'm dying to know where this apartment was and how I afforded it."

"It was in some leafy suburb. I remember all the trees."

"Good thing I had driverless robot cars to take me to and from work, then. So did you finally cough up the tip?"

"Yeah, and once I did all the computer stuff stopped chasing us. But then you were mad that you had thrown away your vibrator for nothing. And then I woke up."

"Well, I'm glad you finally got what's been coming to you as far as your unacceptable tipping habits."

"Tipping is for exceptional service, Scully! They got my order wrong! And they were robots!"

"That's such an upper-class thing to say. You know servers don't make a living wage without tips. It's part of the cost of eating at a restaurant and if you can't pay it, you shouldn't eat there."

"ROBOTS, Scully. They don't need a living wage. They're not alive."

"Also, what does you throwing away my vibrator mean? That's got to have some kind of meaning, Profiling Wonderboy Mulder."

"You threw it away. And burned your own apartment down. Accidentally, but still." The waitress is back with the half-and-half, which Scully pours liberally into her refilled coffee.

"Why, though? What does it mean?"

"Well, I think it means that my subconscious wants you to come home. But so does the rest of me, so, I already knew that."

There's a little silence. Scully sips her coffee. Her face-down phone chimes softly again. She ignores it.

"Drones...in the house, Mulder?"

"Yeah. You know what I just realized they reminded me of? Those little green flying bugs. Do you remember? It was one of our first cases. Way back when."

"God. Of course I remember. We were in quarantine for two weeks."

"Yeah. They reminded me of those. I got the willies when I saw them on the Olympics thing and now I know why. They were purple though, not green. In my dream."

"You told me, as I recall, that it would be a nice trip to the forest."

"I probably did."

"It was NOT a nice trip to the forest, Mulder."

"I, honestly, Scully, I probably would have said anything to get you to come with me. Even then."

She shakes her head at him. They sit in companionable silence for a bit, the human noise of the diner around them.

"It would be a lot of trouble to find a new apartment, if I were to burn the current one down, due to evil sentient robots," she muses, after a time. "Probably more trouble than it would be worth."

"Probably."

"Since I don't have a Scott, in real life, to find me one."

"Shame."

"Not to mention that I could save on rent and protect you from scary drones at the same time."

His stomach flutters a bit. They have talked about this, sort of, in a roundabout way, but he hasn't wanted to ask too often, or too insistently. Scully doesn't like to be pushed. By him, by a phone that she had instructed to remind her about things, by anyone.

"Plus, no place would live up to that apartment," he says. "No place you could find in the city at least. Or anywhere, really. Unless like, maybe on a billionaire's private island or something."

"But then the commute would be hell. Even with a recklessly driving driverless car. Or boat, I guess."

"Is Scott also a billionaire, by any chance?"

"Scott can barely pay his own rent. And I think he's just with me for the free meals."

"Scott," he says, with a joking disgust that is not entirely forced. "God. Well. If that ever happens, Scully. You know the way back."

"It would be even worse if I lost my favorite vibrator at the same time." She's lowered her voice, he knows, so the entire diner won't overhear them, but he enjoys the effect anyway.

"You know I'm always willing to pinch-hit for your little pink buddy." He drops his voice to match hers. She touches her tongue to the side of her lip in that way that drives him crazy, then takes another gulp of her coffee.

"Or, you know. You don't HAVE to wait for it to burn down."

"True."

"There's room in that drawer next to the bed for Scully's little helper."

"Mulder...enough."

"I'm just saying."

She reaches over and rests her hand on his, warm from the coffee cup, lacing their fingers together, then leans her head into his shoulder. It's another reason he likes sitting at the counter. Being next to her, a very good reason.

"Got time for a walk around the park after this?" he asks. "Work off breakfast, get some extra steps in?"

"Sure," she says, giving his hand a squeeze. "There's nowhere else I need to be."

When they leave, he makes sure to tip the waitress well.

"Blobfish," he says in Scully’s ear on their way out the door, and she dissolves into giggles.