Main Timeline: 1996

1996

Sometime in 1996, June Gerwich disappears, changing her identity and hoping for a second chance. She uses some of Pinker Rawls' $90,000 robbery money to make a down payment on a house, finds a new middle class boyfriend and begins making a fresh start. (Trevor)

January 12, 1996

SYZYGY. Two high school girls, Terri and Margi, seem to be possessed during an astronomical confluence, and kill off several of their high school classmates. (The episode title, Syzygy, is defined as "the nearly straight-line configuration of three celestial bodies in a gravitational system, such as the sun, moon and earth during a solar eclipse." It is pronounced SIZ-eh-gee. It comes from the Greek word for "yoked together.")

??? 1996

Grotesque. William Patterson is now head of the Investigative Support Unit at the FBI Academy at Quantico. When the particularly gruesome serial murderer, John Mostow, being trailed by Patterson is arrested, Patterson develops a split personality resulting from identifying with the murderer and he begins a series of copycat murders. Mulder and Scully capture him.

??? 1996

Jose Chung's "From Outer Space." Nobody really knows what happened in this episode. Because the episode is told from many different perspectives, the truth is even more ambiguous than usual. It appears to tell the story of how US military pilots are flying advanced craft, possibly based on captured UFO technology. It also appears to show how the military inserts false memories in people's minds to make them think they have encountered aliens. One character also suggests that the "aliens" are from inner space, from inside the Earth.

March 7, 1996

Avatar. Walter Skinner is set up for discreditation to remove his support for the X-Files on the eve of his divorce, and is briefly suspended from his job. His wife, Sharon, is seriously injured, and they decide not to divorce. He repeatedly sees the old woman who has appeared to him on occasion during his life to give warning or aid.

??? 1996

Quagmire. Scully's pet dog, Queequeg, (named after the harpoonist in Moby Dick) is eaten by an alligator. She and Mulder discover the large alligator in Heuvelman's Lake, in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Georgia, but miss an aquatic dinosaur that inhabits the lake, known by the locals as Big Blue. Scully mentions that she has lost weight recently.

April 27, 1996

Wetwired. A Braddock Heights, MD, man kills his wife and four people, claiming they were all the same man. In fact, the Lone Gunmen discover that signals sent through cable television lines contain subliminal signals causing psychotic reactions. This is similar to the signals that caused psychotic reactions in 1994, seen in Blood. It becomes clear that X and Cancer Man are associates. Episode concludes May 2.

May 1996

Eddie Van Blundht, Junior, begins using his shape changing ability to have sex with several married women, making each think he is her husband (or Luke Skywalker, in one case), in Martinsburg. West Virginia, a town with less than 15,000 people. (Small Potatoes)

May 17, 1996

Initial airline scenes in Telico.

June 1996

Transgen Pharmaceuticals begins making payments to Roberta Sim in connection with experiments on her adopted daughter, Emily. Emily has been diagnosed with a rare form of autoimmune hemolytic anemia. The company uses her in double-blind tests, but Roberta is not satisfied that Emily is being properly cared for. The cash payments are $30,000 each. (Christmas Carol)

??? 1996

Talitha Cumi. Teena Mulder has a stroke after talking with her old acquaintance Cancer Man, and is hospitalized in Providence, RI. Multiple IRS employees named Jeremiah Smith are discovered to be working in offices around the country, storing huge amounts of data on smallpox vaccinations. Smith also has the power to heal sickness or wounds, just by touching the victim. (Season Three Finale)

??? 1996

Herrenvolk. Scully is taken captive for at least the sixth time since becoming an FBI agent, the second time by the Bounty Hunter, however he releases her unharmed. Jeremiah Smith shows Mulder a Canadian farm where human "drones," some apparently clones of Samantha Mulder, raise bees among ginseng plants.

Smith tells Mulder that the bees are deadly poison to humans, but not to his people. The Bounty Hunter kills Smith, but complies with Cancer Man's request to cure Mrs. Mulder of her stroke. Meanwhile, X is assassinated when the Conspiracy traces an information leak to him. Before he dies, he leaves word for Mulder to contact a Special Representative to the Secretary General of the UN.

??? 1996

One month after the main events in Herrenvolk, Mulder meets Marita Covarrubias, Assistant to one of the Special Representative to the Secretary General of the UN. She tells him that the bee farm has been abandoned, and no evidence of bees or bee husbandry is left. However, she gives him photographic proof of the ginseng plants and the Samantha clones.

Cancer Man convinces the Bounty Hunter to bring Mrs. Mulder out of the coma from her stroke. He argues that if Mulder loses his mother, he would become more dangerous.

??? 1996

Scully baby sits her nephew, one week before the episode "Home." He watches the movie "Babe" several times. It is unclear who this nephew is. Siblings Bill, Jr. and Melissa have no children as of this date. Apparently this is a reference to a son of Charles Scully.(Home)

??? 1996

Home. Members of the Peacock family, of Home Pennsylvania, murder Sheriff Andy Taylor, his wife and Deputy Barney. Mulder and Scully conduct a raid on their home, and two males of the family are killed. The remaining Peacock family members leave their farm to begin a new family, apparently planning to use their long tradition of genetic inbreeding, (which is not unlike the Peacock Network's creation of the series Dark Skies in 1996).

In a conversation with Mulder, Scully expresses the desire to have children, foreshadowing Never Again, where she expresses dissatisfaction that the X-Files have become her entire life.

August 1996

Telico. Date given as three months after May 17th events.

Circa August 1996

Cancer Man is notified by Walden Ross of Pivotal Publications that his story "Take a Chance: A Jack Colquitt Adventure" dealing with alien assassinations will be serialized beginning in the November 12, 1996, in Roman A'Clef Magazine. He still receives mail at the same address as in 1991, 555 Brooksbank Avenue, Apartment 24, Washington DC 20091, which is not the address where Mulder found him living in One Breath. (Musings...)

11 October 1996

Unruhe. Dana Scully is taken captive for at least the seventh time since becoming an FBI agent -- this time as she is about to get into her Ford Explorer four-wheel drive -- by Gerald Schnaus, Jr. (Date is date of Scully's final report. If the episodes of this season had been broadcast in the order produced, this would have been the actual broadcast date. Instead, "Home," intended as the Halloween episode, was broadcast two weeks early.)

November 12, 1996

Unrequited. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the Washington DC mall is rededicated. At Fort Evanston, Maryland, Nathaniel Teager kills Lieutenant General Peter MacDougal and Steffan -- two of the three officers who secretly authorized leaving American POWs behind in Vietnam, and authorized listing Teager as dead. Teager, using the ability he learned in Vietnam to cloud people's minds and appear invisible, also stalks Major General Benjamin Block. He is killed by an FBI agent shortly after giving a list of American survivors in Vietnam to a friend, Leo Danziger. Skinner receives a bullet wound on the arm. The Defense Department reports that the dead man is Thomas Lynch, who has a history of mental illness.(Unrequited)

November 1996

The Field Where I Died. Mulder and Scully investigate the Temple of the Seven Stars, a cult in Hamilton County, Tennessee, lead by Vernon Ephesian, who believes in reincarnation. They meet Melissa Riedel Ephesian who is 25 and seems to suffer multiple personality disorder, with each personality seeming to be a previous life. One personality claims to have been a nurse who watched Mulder die on November 26, 1863, as a Confederate soldier in a Civil War battle.

Under regression hypnosis Mulder relates previous lives and claims souls live together again and again. He feels he was a Jewish woman in the Warsaw ghetto during World War II, Samantha was his son, his father was Scully, Melissa was his husband and Cancer Man was a Gestapo officer (even though Cancer Man and William Mulder were was likely alive during the Warsaw ghetto uprising). He also states that in the Civil War, he was Sullivan Biddle, Melissa was Sarah Kavanaugh, and Scully was his sergeant.

The cult commits suicide, including Melissa. Mulder believes he may have known Scully in many lifetimes.

??? 1996

Sanguinarium. An apparent demon or devil worshiper causes several people to die during plastic surgery at Greenwood Memorial Hospital, Chicago. Nurse Rebecca Waite, a practicing witch, attempts to stop him, but is killed by his causing dozens of straight pins to appear in her throat. Ten years earlier, at the same hospital, he had caused four deaths, and them changed his appearance and identity. He changes his appearance again, by surgically removing his facial skin, and secures a job in Los Angeles under a new identity. Note that Waite wore a red cord around her wrist to help protect her, similar to the red string used in The Calusari.

November 1, 1996

Walter Skinner moves to a new apartment on the seventeenth floor of a building in Crystal City, Virginia. His wife, Sharon Skinner, does not appear to be in residence although she and Skinner partially reconciled in The Avatar.

Krycek sends Mulder anonymous information about members of a right wing militia planning a bombing. The information, delivered over the next two weeks, consists of receipts for detonation cord, diesel fuel and 80 bags of ammonium nitrate, paid for in cash and over three different signatures. The timeframe given for these deliveries is "over the last several weeks" prior to November 25th.

November 12, 1996

Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man. Cancer Man writes a letter of resignation, and takes it with him to buy the weekly issue of Roman A'Clef containing the first installment of his story. He leaves his cigarettes home. The magazine cover headline says, "warm up to the cold war barnburner Second Chance."

He is devastated to learn that the ending (presumably of the first installment?) has been rewritten completely. It causes him to tear up his resignation letter, and buy more Cigarettes.

Frohike reads the Roman A'Clef story, and puts two and two together, concluding that Second Chance is Cancer Man's autobiographical story, where in fact it is only semi-autobiographical. Cancer Man sets up a rifle and scope to kill Frohike, but for the moment at least, gives himself a minor second chance by letting Frohike live. (Date from the resignation letter. Frohike events may be same day or shortly thereafter.)

November 23, 1996 -- Saturday

At Honolulu International Airport, a US government operative is detained by Customs officials in spite of his diplomatic visa. He is carrying what he calls toxic soil samples in a diplomatic case that originated in Georgia, Russia. Accidentally broken, the sample container contains organisms that enter human bodies and immobilize them. They also give the appearance of oil within the human eyeball, similar to the entities from the Pacific Ocean Foo Fighter. (Tunguska)

November 24, 1996 -- Sunday

Paper Hearts. Mulder has a series of dreams in which he sees a blonde girl, dead in the forest. He actually finds a skeleton where he saw in the dream, and recognizes the M.O. of John Lee Roche. The victim is identified as Addie Sparks, but Mulder soon comes to suspect that Roche may have kidnapped Samantha. Roche actually claims to Mulder to have killed Samantha, after Mulder finds the trophy hearts, although there are several other ways Roche could have learned about Mulder's memories of Samantha's abduction.

Mulder takes Roche to Martha's Vineyard. In spite of Roche's detailed memory of each crime, he does not realize that Mulder has taken him to the wrong house. Roche escapes Mulder and almost kills a new victim, Caitlin Ross, before Mulder kills Roche -- without learning the identity or location of the 16th victim.

(Date November 24 is given on evidence tags containing the hearts. These events are difficult to resolve with Tunguska. Scully says clearly that Abbie is found on a Sunday morning, which is consistent with the 24th of November. Two nights pass in this episode, however, meaning Roche was killed on November 26th, while Mulder and Krycek are otherwise reported to be flying to Russia.)

On November 24th, Mulder receives another anonymous nighttime delivery of receipts -- one for first and last month's rent for a warehouse in Flushing, Queens, New York and one for rent of a two ton truck, purchased with the same signature. Mulder fears "we could be looking at the next Oklahoma City." (Tunguska)

Note: The events of November 25 through December 6 are depicted in Tunguska and Terma. There is significant intermixing of events. Particularly, the events experienced by Mulder in Russia, and Scully in America, while depicted as happening simultaneously, may be offset by a few days.

November 25, 1996 -- Monday

Tunguska and Terma. Mulder organizes an FBI raid in Queens that stops an apparent plot by American revolutionaries to stage a major bombing. Mulder and Scully take Krycek into custody. He volunteers to help them get the man who tried to kill him, and was responsible for the deaths of Bill Mulder and Melissa Scully. He tips them to a diplomat bringing a pouch into the country. The pouch, when recovered, contains an ancient Mars rock. How Krycek knows about the diplomatic couriers is unclear, and neither Scully nor Mulder asks, on camera, at least.

Mulder leaves Krycek at Skinner's. While Skinner is away, the man who lost the pouch comes searching for it and Krycek kills him. The man falls from Skinners balcony, attracting police attention.

At the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, Department of Exobiology, a core sample is drilled into the Mars rock. It releases what appears to be oil, coalescing into worm-like organisms that enters the body of the scientist, Dr. Sacks, and puts him in a coma state.

Cancer Man tells Skinner that he needs the pouch, and who told Scully and Mulder to intercept it. He says "wars have broken out over less."

Marita, who Mulder locates at her home on the upper West Side of New York City and spends almost four hours in her apartment, leaving Krycek handcuffed in the car. Marita tells Mulder where the pouch originated, in Russia, near Tunguska. Marita provides Mulder cover credentials, and he and Krycek depart for Russia. (Krycek claims his parents were cold war immigrants and he speaks Russian.) The Well Manicured Man later tells Cancer Man that Mulder's travel to Tunguska represents a crisis.

Scully, Mulder and Skinner are subpoenaed by Senator Sorenson to testify before a Senate subcommittee, because of the murder at Skinner's apartment and related events. (Date of these events taken from Mulder's wrist watch display.)

At the Harrow Convalescent Home, Boca Raton Florida, several patients in the infirmary are used a test subjects for a vaccine against the "black cancer."

November 26, 1996 -- Tuesday

Mulder and Krycek reach Tunguska and find a gulag, with mining in progress by slave labor.

Both are captured by men on horseback. Another prisoner claims to Mulder that Krycek is speaking Russian to the guards as an equal, and that he is deceiving Mulder. Mulder finds that he has received an injection in his smallpox vaccination scar.

Scully and Skinner meet with the Congressional subcommittee chair. (Tunguska)

November 27, 1996 -- Wednesday

Mulder and several other involuntary experimental subjects are infected with the Black Cancer organisms from the Martian rocks.

In St. Petersburg, Russia, a retired intelligence operative, Vassily Peskow, is recruited by "Comrad Arntzen" in Krasnoyarsk. Arntzen is actually Krycek, or vice versa. (Terma)

November 28, 1996 -- Thanksgiving

At Goddard, Scully finds some sort of worm growing inside Dr. Sacks' blood stream. (Date based on Scully's comment about Dr. Sacks not receiving anything but fluids for 48 hours, with 48 hours counted from his infection.)

November 29, 1996 -- Friday

Mulder awakes from the experiment, apparently none the worse for wear. A former geologist tells Mulder that hundreds of people have died as the result of the experiments. Mulder subsequently escapes in a delivery truck, briefly taking Krycek captive.

Mulder is assisted by the wife of the delivery truck driver. He begins making his way back to America -- a task made more difficult by his loss of his passport and other papers.

November 30, 1996 -- Saturday

Krycek is given sanctuary by Russian civilians who then forcibly amputate his left arm, to remove his smallpox vaccination scar.

December 1, 1996 -- Sunday

Peskow arrives in America and kills Dr. Bonita Charre-Sayre at her horse farm near Charlottesville, Virginia. He does this to short- circuit Conspiracy research into the Black Cancer.

The Well Manicured Man asks Cancer Man to find the killer of his lover, Dr. Charre-Sayre. Cancer Man convinces the congressional majority and minority leaders to create a red herring and question Scully about Mulder's location, rather than the crimes themselves.

December 2, 1996 -- Monday

Scully spends the day at Goddard, learning that organisms with the appearance of worms are growing in Dr. Sacks bloodstream. (Terma)

December 3, 1996 -- Tuesday

Dana Scully testifies before a Senate Select Subcommittee on Intelligence and Terrorism. She attempts to warn the subcommittee about the conspiracy, but committee members demand that she reveal Mulder's location. She does not, and is jailed for Contempt of Congress . (Tunguska)

Note: Scully mentions that she left behind a career in medicine for one in law enforcement four years ago. December 1992 would be several months after she was assigned to the X-Files, and at that point she had already been employed by the FBI for a couple of years. She may mean that her assignment to the X-Files marked the transition from a career in which her job was mostly medicine -- teaching at the FBI Academy, to one in which medicine was more incidental.

Peskow kills Dr. Sack and steals the meteorite fragment. Cancer Man reveals Peskow's identity to the Well Manicured Man. (Terma)

December 4, 1996 -- Wednesday

Mulder walks in on a Congressional hearing, short circuiting the committee's pressure on Scully for Mulder's location. Scully and Mulder travel to Boca Raton and learn of the infection of convalescent home patients with Black Cancer. Peskow kills the test patients with poison.

Mulder and Scully then interview militia leader Timothy Edward Meyhew, who reveals that Krycek planned to explode another bomb in North Dakota. The truck rented by Krycek is traced to Canada and Scully and Mulder follow. (Terma)

December 5, 1996

At an abandoned refinery in Alberta, Peskow plants Krycek's remaining bomb and the Tunguska rock at a well head. With the well spouting oil, the bomb explodes, causing an oil well fire. The rock is either burned, or pulled deep into the earth. Mulder is injured by the blast. Scully encounters Pescow, but is not injured. (Terma)

December 6, 1996

Scully and Mulder testify before the congressional subcommittee, but are left with no hard evidence of any of the crimes. Cancer Man and a congressional committee member destroy the documents and interview reports submitted by Scully.

Krycek visits Pescow's apartment to congratulate him on a fine job in America. He uses a prosthetic left arm. (Terma)

December 1996

Transgen Pharmaceuticals makes its second payment of $30,000 to Roberta Sim in connection with experiments on her adopted daughter, Emily. (Christmas Carol)

Proceed to 1997

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