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The Brain Files

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Acme Labs

9:45 pm

"What's that you're looking at, Brain?" Pinky looked over the shoulder of his long-time companion at what appeared to be a manila folder. "It looks like a file of some sort! Narf!"

"Once again, your razor sharp brain has outdone itself, Pinky." The smaller of the two mice turned the page of the file with some exertion.

"Gee, thanks, Brain."

"Do you see this man?" He held up a glossy photo of a man in a black Armani suit and a red and purple paisley tie. "This man has the closest thing in the world to proof of alien existance. Life, and intelligence higher than our own!" Brain raised his tiny hands to the sky, and Pinky looked thoughtful. "Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"

"I think so, Brain. But I think only an FBI agent could wear a tie that goofy with a nice suit and get away with it. Poit!"

"No, Pinky. We must travel to Washington D.C. If we can get the information from him, we can use it to contact the extraterrestrials and use their knowledge to take over the world!"

"You mean like E.T. phone home?"

"No, like your brain has been recalled by the lab." He smacked Pinky on the head, then started out of their lab cage. "Come along, Pinky. This is going to be a most successful evening."

"Whatever you say, Brain. Narf!"

F.B.I. Headquarters

10:35 p.m.

"That was the worst excuse for an alien I have ever seen in my life." Agent Fox Mulder threw his coat onto the chair as he re-entered his office, and Agent Dana Scully walked in behind him.

"I hate to say I told you so, Mulder, but let's be serious. What made you believe that Industrial Light and Magic was a storehouse for frozen alien corpses?" She sat in the chair across from his desk, and Mulder stared at the pictures on the wall.

"My source sent me pictures."

"I give up. You'd probably believe that They keep records on every book you buy at the store, too." She was smirking, but Mulder sat straight up in his chair.

"There is documented proof of..." Scully silenced his words with a hand.

"Enough! I'm going to get some coffee. Want some?"

"Yeah, sure." Mulder turned on his computer with a sigh. And he had been so sure about this one, too. He rubbed his temples. Sometimes it seemed like nothing interesting ever happened around here. At least it was almost time for him to go home.

Outside the Big Scary Building

10:45 pm

"Are we going into that big, scary building, Brain?"

"That 'Big Scary Building,' as you so aptly put it, is the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation!" Brain motioned up at the imposing, but rather nondescript building with a flourish, but Pinky blinked at him and clung to his own tail.

"Zort! Impressive, Brain. But are we going into that scary building?"

"You have the I.Q. of a soda cracker, Pinky." With that, Brain started into the building. Pinky followed him, suddenly grinning.

"Gee, that's great, Brain!"

"And why is that, Pinky?" His voice was rather weary, as if he knew something weird was coming.

"Because if we're ever starving, we can just eat my I.Q. with some milk! Haha! Get it, Brain? Milk? Haha! Narf!" Pinky was laughing as if he had just come up with the formula for nitrous oxide, and Brain sighed heavily.

"Of the thousands of laboratories and millions of cages in the world, you had to go insane in mine." As he spoke, the two mice slipped into the elevator behind a balding man with glasses. He pressed a button, and Brain turned to his friend. "This man can take us to the man we're looking for. According to my files, this is his boss."

"This shiny-head man?" Pinky at once started to laugh uncontrollably. "Hahaha! Shiny-head! Shiny-head! Narf!"

"Yes, The Shiny-head Man." Brain's voice was a monotone as he shook his head and looked up at the man. "Excuse me! Mr. Walter Skinner, we would like to ask for your assistance." The man did not even look down, having not heard Brain's mousy voice. Nonplussed, Brain tried again. "Mr. Walter Skinner! Hellooo? Down here!" While Brain was waving his little pink hands at the man in a vain attempt to capture his attention, he noticed something moving upwards toward the man's head. Brain gasped. "Pinky! What do you think you're doing?"

"I just want to rub his head, Brain. You know, for luck!" Pinky crawled up the back of Skinner's neck while Brain covered his eyes. Startled by the feel of small mousy paws on his neck, Skinner jumped about a foot, then reached back and plucked the creature from his person.

"What the--" All of a sudden, Pinky burst into tears. Skinner looked around the empty elevator, completely unnerved. "What do you want from me?" Brain folded his small arms and looked at the mouse in the man's hand.

"What is it now, Pinky?"

"I...snif...just wanted to...poit!...rub his head." Rubbing his eyes with the backs of his paws, Pinky looked incredibly pitiful and Skinner looked, wide-eyed at the two mice.

"For heaven's sake, let him rub your head." Brain looked somewhere between exasperated and embarrassed, and Skinner didn't want to be the one to go against the wishes of two talking mice. He set Pinky on his shoulders. With a happy laugh, Pinky leapt onto Skinner's head and started rubbing the shiny surface.

"Zort! Whee! Shiny-head, shiny-head!" Having pacified Pinky, Brain motioned for Skinner to pick him up. The man obliged, still confused about the whole business.

"We are searching for a man called Special Agent Fox Mulder..."

"Who wears goofy ties!" Pinky piped up from the top of Skinner's head, where he was still buffing Skinner's head to a sparkly shine. Brain rolled his eyes.

"Yes. We also believe that he has information pointing to the existance of aliens." Brain looked up at Skinner, who looked as if he had a headache.

"I knew I shouldn't have eaten that fifth bratwurst before bed." The man rubbed his stomach while Pinky slid over his head and landed in his outstretched hand.

"We are not hallucinations!" Brain said, sounding offended. Pinky laughed.

"Yeah, we're mice! Hahaha! Narf!"

"An astute observation, Pinky." He turned back to Skinner. "Now, will you take us to the office of Special Agent Fox Mulder?" The elevator stopped, and the very confused Skinner disembarked. He appeared to be in a daze.

"Has anyone seen the Alka-Seltzer? I'm...not feeling too well..." There was no one in sight, and Brain sighed.

"We're not getting anywhere with this, Pinky."

"Oh, I don't know, Brain. sounds to me like we're going to get some Alka-Seltzer!" Pinky clapped his paws. "Mm-mm! Yummy yummy Alka-Seltzer!"

"Quiet, Pinky." As they passed a door, Brain noticed a sign attached to it which read 'Special Agent Fox Mulder.' "There it is! Get ready to jump, Pinky!"

"Jump where?"

"Here!" He pulled Pinky down from the hand of the man and onto the floor. After recovering from their shock, the two mice stood and looked around. "This is the office of Special Agent Fox Mulder. It is here we must go to get the secrets we need to take over the world!" The door was open a crack, and Brain struggled to open it further while Pinky looked down the hall, deep in thought.

"I think I'd still rather have the Alka-Seltzer, Brain. Zort!"

"Forget the stupid Alka-Seltzer and help me, Pinky!"

"Oh! Heh-heh! Sorry, Brain." Pinky helped him push open the door, and they walked into the office. "Na-arf!" Pinky exclaimed as he saw the piles and piles of paper around the room. "Look at all this neat stuff!"

"All the knowledge! The piles and pile of knowledge in these papers! Pinky, do you realize what this means?" Brain was getting more and more excited by the moment.

"That this guy is messy _and_ fashion impaired?"

"What is it like to live in your world, Pinky?" Brain was already on his way to the desk, where a man was sitting at a computer and looking very serious. The two mice crawled up the power cord and onto the desk. "He appears to be working very hard."

"No, no! How could this happen?" Mulder slammed a fist on the desk's surface. "Scully! What was the password to level six again?"

"Level Six!" Brain sounded impressed with this development. "That must be the key to some highly classified information!"

"Are you playing that 'Area 51' game again?" A woman's voice came from the adjoining room, and Mulder groaned loudly. Pinky jumped up.

"Wow! Video games!" He ran around the side of the computer and pressed his face against the screen. "Oooh! It's one of those shoot the alien games! Narf! Can I play?"

"What the--" Mulder pushed his chair away from the desk as Pinky began jumping up and down on the keyboard. "What's going on here?"

"If you'll just excuse my friend, he's...not well." Brain stepped under the desk lamp with a sigh. Meanwhile, Mulder rubbed his forehead.

"To tell you the truth, I'm not feeling too well myself. I'm...seeing mice on my desk." He squinted. "Talking mice."

"I assure you, Agent Mulder, you are not insane." He looked over at Pinky, who was still jumping up and down on the keyboard and laughing like a maniac. "Pinky, on the other hand..."

"Okay, okay. Assuming you are real and not a product of some kind of top-secret mind-altering gas, what do you want with me?" Perhaps, he thought, if I talk to them for a while they'll go away.

"We only wish to know what you know. You have knowledge of beings with intelligence higher than our own. Please, tell me all you know about contacting these beings, so that I may use that knowledge to take over the world!"

"Are we talking about aliens here?" Real or not, the mice were starting to pique his interest. Well, the one with the big head. The other one was a little...odd. "What do you know about them?"

"We don't know anything! That's why we're here asking you!" Brain was starting to wonder whether they had come to the right place or not. Pinky had given up on the game, and was rooting through one of Mulder's open desk drawers.

"What makes you think that I..."

"Oooo-ooh! Sunflower seeds!" With some exertion, Pinky dragged the huge bag of sunflower seeds out of the drawer and onto the desk. Mulder snatched them away from the mouse.

"Hey! Give me those!" In his hurry to get back his precious stash, Mulder accidentally brushed the two mice into the wastebasket. At that moment, Scully walked in, carrying two cups of coffee. As she did, she noticed Mulder digging in the trash can. "Guys? Are you two okay in there?" Scully stared at him blankly.

"Mulder? Are you feeling all right?"

"I feel fine, Scully." He looked into the basket again. "I was just looking for a mouse in there, and..."

"A mouse."

"Yeah, Scully! There was a mouse in here a minute ago! It had a huge head, and it was talking to me about taking over the world!"

"Mulder, did you get into that medicinal marijuana again?"

"I am not crazy!" Mulder looked down into the wastebasket again and saw the two mice struggling their way out. He picked them up and set them on his desk. "Look!"

"Yes, they _are_ mice." She looked closely at them, and Pinky looked enthralled with the red-haired agent before him. "But they aren't talking. Are you sure you didn't just imagine...

"Zort! She's cute, Brain!" As Pinky grinned up at Scully, her eyes widened in surprise. It couldn't be...

"Mulder! That mouse talked!" Scully picked him up and inspected him closely. Pinky blushed.

"Aw...you _do_ like me!" He giggled, and Scully looked up at Mulder in confusion. He shrugged.

"Don't look at me, Scully."

"This has to be some kind of trick." The woman was still shaking her head, and Brain looked impatient. If they were going to take over the world, they would have to stop all this talking and get down to business. Scully leaned over to Brain. "Where did you come from? And what do you want?"

"I am the Brain, and that in your hand is Pinky. We're lab mice from Acme Labs. We came here to get information from your partner here to contact alien life and use their knowledge to take over the world." Brain was trying to be dramatic, and Pinky smiled goofily up at Scully.

"Poit! I just wanted some sunflower seeds."

"Mulder, give Pinky some of your sunflower seeds." Scully sat him on the table, and quite reluctantly, Mulder supplied him with a small pile of seeds. "You say you're lab mice? That would explain..." She looked over at Pinky, who had stuffed his mouth full of sunflower seeds. "...him, and the size of your head, too!

"My head? What's wrong with my head?"

"What has science wrought this time? These poor unfortunate creatures! Mulder, we must study them and find out what cruel experiments they have been subjected to!"

"Isn't that kind of redundant, Scully?" The man in the suit folded his arms, and the two agents proceeded to argue it out while Brain went over to Pinky, who was still shelling sunflower seeds.

"I think we may have made a slight mistake in contacting these two. I don't think they know as much about contacting aliens as we thought they did." Brain turned to the two federal agents. "Excuse me? Excuse me? Does either of you actually know anything about the contacting of extraterrestrial life forms?"

"Not a thing," Mulder admitted with a sheepish smile. Folding her arms, Scully nodded her assent.

"Even if we did know how, it would take over 200 years for the message to reach them, and another 200 for their reply to get here. And I don't think you two would be able to last out 400 years, even if your genes have been...drastically...altered." She shrugged. "Sorry, little guys."

"That's okay," Pinky said, through his mouthful of seeds. "I don't know if we'd want to meet them anyways." He pointed up to the photos on Mulder's wall. "They look kind of...y'know...weird. Narf!"

"Now if that's not the pot calling the kettle weird, I don't know what is." Brain sighed. "Another great plan foiled by the defective science of this planet."

"Wish we could have helped," Mulder said, shrugging. He watched as the two mice crawled down the power cord and onto the floor.

"Thanks for...whatever you did," Brain said, sighing. "Let's go, Pinky."

"Bye!" Pinky waved at the two agents, who waved back, grinning. As he and Brain disappeared out the door, Mulder turned to Scully, still grinning.

"Scully, are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"I'm pretty sure I am. Let's run a check on the emissions from the ventilation system, and let's just hope we find some kind of hallucinogens." She shook her head, and Mulder looked at her.

"Do you really think we both were under the influence of some sort of perception-altering substance?" He looked up at the vent, which was right over their heads and Scully shrugged her shoulders.

"Either that, or we were both just sharing a moment of temporary insanity."

"Aw, Scully...I think you're flirting with me!"

Outside the Big Scary Building Again

12:30 am

"Well, there goes another brilliant plan." Brain looked up at the F.B.I. building and sighed, his ears drooping sadly. "Come along, Pinky."

"Now what Brain?" Pinky followed his friend down the street, and onto the long journey back to their cage in the lab.

"We must return to the lab to prepare for tomorrow night."

"What are we going to do tomorrow night, Brain?"

"The same thing we do every night, Pinky." He looked off into the face of some unseen person. "TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!"

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The Truth Is Out There...Narf!

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