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HFH presents a sci-fi yuletide story to be read in front of a fire with a hot toddy and your faithful Lab curled at your slippered feet -- oh, and make sure you keep an eye on those plush Christmas toys.

The Xmas Files (Part 1) 
This story originally appeared on the Web site SPACE.com in December 1999.

by Michael Battaglia

While the rest of us fa-la-la, an invasion is underway. Only Inspectors Wolff Molder and Dina Sulky stand between the very survival of humanity and an evil cabal of under-tree aliens.  

                Chapter One

Xmas File 12-98XF/ Case #19/ Agent Wolff Molder/ Interrogation Notes:

It was the busiest Xmas I’d ever seen.  The interview of this eyewitness went like all the others. The subject had been brought into the hospital ER in tatters, suffering from exposure.

            Considering what the victim had been through, he was quite cogent -- even remarking, ‘They’re gonna’ let me outta’ here tomorrow mornin’ -- seems like ya need to be a lot sicker than me to be welcome in a hospital nowadays.’

            “HMO, huh?” I quipped to relax him as the hypnotist made her preparations. Lately, I can’t seem to interview witnesses without one. But that’s par for the course when you are investigating an Xmas File case. I started the session--“Now if you don’t mind, we’re going to help you remember, Mr. --”

            -- “Gritt.  Strom Gritt.  Look, yer shrink can keep wavin’ that shiny thing in my face, but ya ain’t gonna’ have any luck puttin’ me under. Fact is, they tried that hypno-thing on me in the Army an’, an’ ....”

            -- “Finally.  I thought he’d never go under.  Now, Mr. Gritt, I want you to think of yesterday afternoon.  Can you tell me what happened?”

            “Yeah, there I was, it was just gettin’ dark and I was trackin’ in the snow. That’s when I saw these oddball prints. Sort’a like a rabbit’s--but really like nuthin’ I’d ever seen. At first I didn’t make much of it, then, all of a sudden, I see this strange green glow comin’ from the trees up ahead. So I approached, real slow like. I went 15 yards or so--that’s when I saw it in the clearing. A big, ah, how can I say it? --”

            -- “Saucer-shaped object?” I suggested hopefully.

            “More like a giant factory -- big as a warehouse -- And it was hoverin’, oh, I’d say a good 50 feet up. An’ there was this ramp leading into trucks --

            “What kind of trucks?”

            “Regular type trucks”

            “From Earth?”

            “Where else?

            “Go on Mr. Gritt,” I urged.

            “Well, there’s these smaller boxes -- made of cardboard, it looked like to me -- hundreds, no, maybe thousands of ‘em. And, they’s all moving down the ramp and into these trucks, ya see.  So I snuck up closer, makin’s sure they didn’t see me. That’s when I saw it --”

            “Saw what?”

            “All of them boxes had somethin’ inside.”                     

            “Can you describe what they looked like?”

            “I’d be glad to. Except I can’t. Ya see, right behind me I suddenly feel this kind’a presence. I turn around and sure enough, there’s this -- animal. It resembled  some kind’a raccoon, but without a mask--and not as big. But, come to think of it, more like a squirrel, but maybe bigger -- but with a face more like a bat. Anyhow, I drew my rifle up real slow like and got a bead on ‘em -- not to shoot him, mind ya, I only had a grouse permit ya see, but just in case he tried somethin’, I figured I’d be ready. He could’a had rabies, ya know. Then, all of sudden, I hear, ‘u-nye mee-mee noo-loo’.

            “Could you repeat that, Mr. Gritt?”

            “‘u-nye mee-mee noo-loo’ -- It was a real tinny mechanical like voice.  I looked around, but only that varmint thing was there.  Then I hear somethin’ like, ‘We love you.’ -- in the same voice. Well I’ll be darn fool if it wasn’t comin’ from the rodent!  The thing was walkin’ on its hind legs even -- I swear it. Then I see another one. And another -- Pretty soon I was surrounded.  But here’s the topper -- when they see each other they all start dancin’ an’ singin’ -- in that crazy language. Before I could get it all figured out, there’s this flash of light -- and next thing I know, I’m plugged into this IV bottle, talking to an agent of the federal government, an’ drinkin’ out of a straw.”

            “Calm down, Mr. Gritt, everything’s going to be all right.” The hypnotist brought him back from slumber land with her usual command -- ‘Okay sir, when I say ‘swamp gas’, you’ll wake up refreshed, and will not remember a thing about your encounter.’

            That’s pretty much how all of the eyewitness stories went. As I compared the accounts, I had come to realize this was no run of the mill Xmas File. 

Chapter Two

Xmas File 12-98XF/ Case #19/ Agent Wolff Molder/ Personal Notes:

             Sometimes I wonder why I do this. Ironic, I was just a kid when it all began, and now, I’m singularly identified with this project. To think, it all goes back to December, 1951 when the government, traumatized by the Red Scare, grew concerned that Christmastime, being a time of good feelings -- you know, the whole ‘Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men’ thing -- caused Americans to let down their guard, therefore exposing us to threats to national security, including a communist invasion. It started as the Air Force’s Operation Grinch, commissioned by Congress in 1952 to investigate clusters of sightings of strange aerial craft reported on successive Xmas Eves from 1949 through 57. The program was resuscitated in 1981 as the Xmas Files after hundreds of unexplained Christmas morning ‘under tree encounters’ with allegedly alien creatures in the guise of toys. Since the investigation was one of those fringe assignments that no other federal agency would touch, it landed as usual in the Postal Service Police’s lap--it seems many of these alleged aliens were shipped via the U.S. Mail.  But even the PSP bottom-drawered it into an occasional investigation of all those unexplained, supernatural, extraordinary and otherwise inexplicable holiday phenomena -- known in the inner circle of the Department as ‘TYT’--‘The Yuletide Triangle.’

            That’s where I, Special Postal Inspector Wolff Molder, come in.  I joined this project with enthusiasm -- the cases intrigued me.  And heck, I never cared much for the yuletide-celebration thing anyway, so it wasn’t a problem working on the holidays -- That was in 1988.  Jeez, I just wanted to believe, but 10 Xmas seasons later, I have no arrests and only a file cabinet stuffed with yellowing dossiers outlining shadowy conspiratorial evidence going all the way back to the 70’s, starting with that aborted terrorist attempt to plant radioactive isotopes in every American’s home via Pet Rocks.  After signing on in ‘84, I cut my teeth on the Cabbage Patch Conspiracy. Hah! What a government cover-up that turned out to be. In fact, every time I come close to cracking a case wide open, it gets shut down -- Coincidence?  I don’t think so. I mean, I even had the goods on that lavender menace, a.k.a. ‘Barney the Dinosaur’, but he got off on a ‘technicality’. Now he’s free as a pterodactyl, and a kiddy show star to boot. My last words to that Cretaceous Scum:  ‘Just keep your purple snout clean buddy boy, because I’ll be watching every move you make.

            So here I sit staking out a toy store two weeks before X-day 1998, stewing in my expensed rental Taurus, eating cold Chinese and watching the crazed Christmas consumers elbow each other. Here’s the bottom line: there had been 18 sightings like Gritt’s in the last three weeks that qualified as Xmas Files--and all with a common theme: Bat-faced rodents-- smaller than a raccoon, bigger than a squirrel, but there’s more -- they’re talking, singing dancing rodents. According to all the eyewitnesses, they walk upright and speak some kind of gibberish in a tinny mechanical chipmunk type voice. Under hypnosis, all the witnesses report hearing some English--e.g., ‘We love you.’ or ‘Boring.’-- mixed in with all the ‘koh mee-mee noo-loo stuff. And it’s always the same song and dance--though not exactly Fosse, at least good enough for summer stock. Some sort of communication system, no doubt.  As for forensic evidence, we have samples of fur, and from Case #13, some kind of sensor lens. Based only on my gut instincts, it all points to one conclusion.  Now I just have to wait for the word from the lab to give me the missing puzzle piece before I make my move.  

‘deet--tah. wee tak-ov-err.’

            That’s where my associate, Special Postal Agent Dina Sulky,  whose smart beauty is only exceeded by her beautiful smarts, comes in.

            My cellular rang.  “So Sulky,” I teased, “I take it you proved my theory?”

            “You can only falsify theories,” she reminded me.

            “Yeah,” I informed her, “I’ve read Popper’s philosophy of science, so let me put it another way -- I was ‘not wrong’.”

            ‘The fur sample doesn’t match any known species,’ she admitted reluctantly.

            “Ya know Sulky?” I said with a smirk, “you’re beautiful when you’re empirical. Let’s try to get that warrant. I’ll bet  you a dinner my hunch is right.”

            But she was serious. “There’s more than dinner on the line if you use department resources to go after another dead end. We’ll both be back in the mailroom working with a bunch of stressed-out postal clerks -- and I don’t need that kind of tension again.”  

            When I returned to my office, I found my desk buried under an avalanche of fresh reports from my field agents. Sifting through the usual holiday reports of unidentified flying sleighs, rooftop hoof prints and abductions to the North Pole, I listened to my voice mail -- final warnings from creditors, lame excuses from subordinates, a stale ultimatum from the chief and, a string of the gibberish: ‘koh-koh doo-mah u-ney-mee noo-loo hap-py’.”

            Agent Hopecase burst in. “Sir, I think you’ll want to see this,” he exclaimed with his annoying youthful energy.

            “Working a little late Henry?”

            “Sir, every interviewed witness from this case either has disappeared, or was found wandering in a toy store, completely incoherent, mumbling like a teenager.”

            “Speaking of alien dialects.  What else did you find?”

            “Only traces of that brown fur, along with the usual battery droppings. And this,” he panted, punching the button on his tape recorder: ‘koh-doo-mah u-ney-mee noo-loo hun-gry.’ Then, ominously: ‘deet--tah. wee tak-ov-err.’ All the victims were chanting this sir!”

            Now things were heating up. “Get the evidence to the lab Hopecase,” I barked. “I want that tape completely analyzed.” Then I spent the rest of the night pondering the tinny gibberish. Where had I heard those phrases before?” Pouring through my files, I couldn’t turn up a clue.  It was around 4 AM when I got a call -- “Who is this?” 

            “Never mind,” commanded the voice, “just listen: it’s comin’ down Xmas morning. Go to FAO Snorzt...new shipment tomorrow...invasion has begun...it’s the Furb-zzzzt--” The line went dead. I figured I’d better get some shut eye--tomorrow was gonna’ be a busy day.

            The next morning Agent Sulky met me at the lab. Just as we suspected, the sensor was some kind of infrared system used for wireless communication. The fur was traced to Hasglo’s Panther Electronics -- their Asian division.

            “But what’s that strange gibberish all about?” she wondered.

            “It’s not gibberish. We checked with Hasglo,” said the forensics expert. “It’s ‘Furbish’. They had assumed it was Chinese -- the language of their underpaid workers -- but actually, we can’t connect it linguistically to any known language. But here’s the real news Sulky, English phrasing is intermingled. It seems they’re slowly acquiring our language.”

            “Did you play the tape real slow and speed it up real fast?”

            “I gave it the whole TV sci-fi show treatment.”

            “Nothing?” I speculated disappointedly. “Even when you play it backwards?”

            “Only the usual patterns and phrases heard when you play any tape backward.”

            “I said it before he could -- “Oh, you mean, ‘I buried Paul.’” --

            “‘-- and Jimmy Hoffa,’ she added.”

            Sulky summed up in her usual flawless logic.  “So, what are you going to give the warrant judge, rodent dolls, made in China, who speak gibberish?  I guess you can take Christmas Day off this year Molder,” she teased. “Of course, that means you’ll need a life.”

            She couldn’t resist taunting me about my somewhat abbreviated social life. Still, I knew this was bigger than just another holiday plush toy frenzy. Much bigger. I had a hunch, but unfortunately, no hard evidence. I called in a few favors and got that warrant anyway.

To Part 2