The X-Files: The Miami incident

The Mall

THE MALL

BAYSIDE MARKETPLACE, MIAMI

8:00 AM

Agents Mulder and Scully arrive at the Miami airport, go to the police station to interview some police officers who were assigned that day, corroborating some data and information obtained through alternative media and testimonies from social networks such as Tik Tok and Instagram. Seeing that no police officer provided anything new and that they had not been inside the place at the time of the alleged sightings, they decided to go directly to the mall, which was closed. Being credentialed as FBI consultants they have direct access wherever they require it, without questioning from the local police.

There is a specific point in the mall where the 10-foot tall strangers appeared, the agents go through the entire place before going to the indicated place, they ask for the recordings of all the cameras of each store, there are at least 150 stores. Then they check the place of the facts in question, all the agents warn them that that day there was a general outage that caused malfunction in the cameras so there is nothing recorded during the whole day.

Mulder and Scully exchange reluctant glances.

-Mulder, don't you think it's strange, there are no recordings, there are no reliable witnesses, there are no cameras, the teenagers were acquitted and since they are minors we have no access to them-Scully looks down and sighs as she feels the hours tick by aimlessly.

-No one said it would be an easy case Scully-Mulder replies-. We have to focus on what we don't have and not on what we do have, which is nothing, he smiles wryly. Scully gives him a gentle smile, looking him straight in the eye, sure that Mulder is up to something, that he has some hypothesis that he is not yet ready to elucidate.

Mulder approached each television set hung in the aisles of the mall, checked them, plugged and unplugged them, checked the speakers hung in each aisle carefully, connected them to the bluetooth of his smartphone and checked the sound and volume. Scully while observing the layout of the cameras in the place, the model, the age, the connectors, the adjustment of the bracket of each one of them.

Arriving at the site of the sightings of these alleged alien shadows they observe nothing strange, except for several helium balloons on the ceiling of the place.

Mulder looks up and takes note of this, while Scully watches him carefully.

-Mulder, do you want me to take care of that. Scully's blue eyes shine brightly with a faint air of irony that only her partner can detect.

-Scully, I sense a certain uneasiness on your part-Mulder exclaims.

-Mulder, I just want the colors of the balloons to be correct in the report to the now Director Skinner-he smirks.

Mulder smiles.

- Scully, if you're referring to my Deuteranopia it's no problem for me, I can perfectly distinguish the colors of the balloons on the ceiling: gold, purple, silver (they were all black and white). Scully looks at him and they both laugh in a complicit manner.

-Mulder, if we don't have the testimonies of the people who visited the mall that day, we should investigate the people who worked that day in the stores in this sector.

-All right, but first let's investigate these stores from the inside.

When entering all the stores, which were around 20, all of them had the common factor that there were children's things inside, like toys or melted ice cream in recyclable plastic cups. Being that they were stores for sports, accessories and other adult-focused things.

-I guess these workers had customers coming in with their young children, don't you think Mulder?

-Mmm maybe Scully I don't know....

-Do you have a hunch Mulder?

-I don't have hunches Scully, I go by the facts!

Scully looks down pursing her lips.

Scully takes the glasses with ice cream in them and sends them off for toxicology analysis.

Mulder buys a bottled water and into a tree empties all the water.

-What are you doing Mulder?

-I'm taking samples, Scully. He walks over to the bathroom and fills the bottle with drinking water.

Both samples are sent for analysis.

-Mulder, the only plausible way to explain what dozens of people saw would be intoxication by some hallucinogenic product.

But how do you explain that they all hallucinated the same thing, with the same characteristics, ten-foot shadows appearing and disappearing, chasing them?

-Collective hysteria Mulder.

-Collective hysteria does not involve collective hallucinations Scully, shared psychotic disorder or folie à deux usually occurs when the affected individuals live close together, are socially or physically isolated and have little interaction with other people which is not the case here, it almost always occurs in cases of cults. They are more like cognitive biases or delusions than actual hallucinations, Scully.

-I don't know Mulder, it's all strangely commonplace here.

-I completely agree Scully, let's get the names of the workers in these stores.

-I agree Mulder.

The next day they went to the house of one of the store workers where the apparitions of these supposed beings took place.

-Good morning, we're Special Agents Mulder and Scully from the FBI, may we ask you a couple of questions?- The homeowner nods and invites them in.

As the agents sit down, the landlady offers them a cup of tea, Scully refuses but Mulder accepts, while the landlady goes to the kitchen, Mulder takes the opportunity to observe the house, the furniture, the photographs on the wall.

-Ma'am, how long have you been working at Bayside Mall?

-For about 8 years, since I was 18, it's the only job where I'm allowed to go with my 7 year old son, since I have no one to leave him with. While the child was playing in the kitchen.

After a series of questions, the agents left and began their journey to another of the mall workers' houses.

After interviewing more than 15 workers on the premises Scully and Mulder end their day.

-Mulder, you've been quiet during the day, are there any hypotheses you have that you'd like to share?

-More than hypotheses are the facts Scully, 70% of the interviewees had pictures on their walls that didn't match the subject matter of the other pictures.

-What do you mean Mulder?

-That those pictures were deliberately put up. Those people had children's things in their workplaces, like leftover ice cream, backpacks, papers with pictures of a child on them and they were crumpled up in the dumpster and there are no pictures of children on their walls. I still don't know what the link is Scully.

The next day they send Scully the results of the toxicology tests from Quantico.

-Mulder, the test results just came back and both the ice cream and the water contain trimethoxyphenethylamine.

-Scully mescaline, a psychoactive substance found naturally in two types of cacti, Peyote (Lophophora williamsii) and San Pedro (Trichocereus pachanoi).

-Mulder that means that a large group of people were drugged, probably with daily microdoses with hallucinogens in a deliberate manner, is alarming and absolutely objectionable behavior.

-Indeed Scully and it is possible that the hallucinations were induced by both the televisions and speakers that were in the room with subliminal messages to stimulate the system and a 3d hologram projector did the rest of the work, although that is the least important thing now.