VITAL STATISTICS
Dreamer: Helen
Date: Jan. 5, 2000
Title: Archaeofishology
I hook up with Dana Scully and Fox Mulder (from The X-Files) to investigate a strange rash of deaths in a coastal fishing village in the American Northwest. The people of this village, - particularly the family that seems somehow to be the center of it all - are anchovy fishermen. Scully does some blood tests and discovers that the youngest, blond son of the central family is the carrier of a mysterious, extremely unusual virus that is only activated in people after they eat anchovies. It lies dormant in your system until you eat an anchovy and then you die quickly, but painfully & horribly.
The mother is outraged that we suspect her son is to blame, but some interesting facts emerge. The son is a vegetarian and has tried to get people to stop eating anchovies. Somehow Mulder figures out that the God of the Anchovies has placed this virus in the boy to punish his anchovy-fishing family and to kill anchovy eaters. The boy himself is spared from death because of his sympathy for the anchovies.
The next thing I know, I'm on a beach on the Vermont side of Lake Champlain with Fox Mulder [a dream-geography beach that I've been to before without Fox - I believe I almost got eaten by sharks there once]. We're there to question archaeofishermen: guys who catch fish and gut them to retrieve any historic beads they might have swallowed.
During the course of the investigation I run into some Hartgen Archeological Associates people: Bill B., Andy K., and some others. They assure me that archaeofishermen are lunatics and pothunters and should be avoided. Shortly thereafter Mulder introduces me to an archaeofisherman who is indeed a lunatic and a pothunter, but he guts a really big fish right in front of me and pulls out a couple of really pretty glass beads and a large, lovely ceramic bead.
We wander around the beach some more, and I wonder what exactly we're supposed to be doing. I have some glass beads in my hand, but just a few - less than a dozen. I thought I had more but they're gone, and it's futile to look on a sandy beach for them. Sad, I go to my hotel room and I find that somebody has scattered handfuls of glass beads all over my bed, and suddenly I feel very happy just before I wake up.
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