Conspiracy Timeline

Conspiracy Timeline Four and a Half Billion Years Ago A rock is blasted off the surface of Mars by a meteor impact. After floating in space, it eventually enters the atmosphere of Earth, and lands in Siberia. It contains dormant biological organisms capable of entering living bodies. (Terma and NASA) Millions of Years Ago, or more A virus sometimes known as the Black Oil and that has the ability to take control of humanoid species is the "original inhabitant" of the planet Earth, according to the Well Manicured Man. He adds that aliens came, also apparently millions of years ago. Those that didn't leave have been dormant since the last Ice Age, waiting for the Colonists.(Movie) 35,000 B.C. Two human hunters follow a line of footprints through the snow and enter an ice cave in what is now northern Texas, during the last ice age. The footprints are three-toed, implying that they are not human. Inside the cave, they find another of their kind, encased in ice. They are attacked by a highly aggressive creature -- an alien. The alien is hard to see, but is based on a reptilian "gray" alien. The first human is killed, but the second kills the alien. Black Oil pours out of the dead alien and enters the body of the human. (Movie) Late 1800s A religious sect settles near Steveston, Massachusetts. They believe in complete isolation from other people, except for the occasional visit to the Steveston feed store. Actually, they (apparently) are aliens, with the ability to change sex and to emit massive amounts of pheromones that can, among other things, create extreme sexual desire in humans. (Genderbender) There is limited evidence that other enclaves of aliens may exist in other parts of the country, such as Georgia. (The Unnatural) 1882 Marjorie Butters is born, according to the claim of the Smoking Man in the episode En Ami. She will still be alive in the year 2000, and will be offered as proof that the Smoking Man has technology that can end human disease and prolong life. June 30, 1908 At Tunguska, in Russian Siberia, a huge explosion occurs, laying waste to a huge geographic area. No scientific study team reaches the site until 1927. It finds fallen trees in a pattern radiating outward from a central point. No crater is found. It is generally considered to be an explosion of a very large meteor or a small comet. (Historical) 1940s Scientists of Germany's Third Reich conduct a series of experiments on unwilling human subjects. Generally reviled as inhumane and barbaric, they were intended to be the basis for a eugenics program to improve the race. (Historical) After Germany surrenders, many of the scientists of the German eugenics program are brought to the United States as part of Operation Paperclip. (Historical) 1942 A Japanese medical unit, 731, conducts human experimentation similar to that of German Victor Klemperer, experimenting on human subjects. Takeo Ishimaru is a leader of the effort.(731) April 26, 1945 The Joint Chiefs of Staff issue Order 1067 to General Dwight David Eisenhower to "preserve from destruction and take under your control records, plans, documents, papers, files and scientific, industrial and other information and data belonging to...German organizations engaged in military research." The effort is known as Operation Paper Clip and includes 127 German scientists and engineers including Werner von Braun. (Historical) Apparently included in this group is Victor Klemperer, who had conducted gruesome experiments on Jewish prisoners in concentration camps. There are allegations he may have experimented on combining human and alien DNA, then or later. (731 & Nisei) Early August 1945 A B-29 transporting a nuclear bomb similar to those used on Japan, and an escort squadron of P-51 Mustangs, crash after an encounter with a triangular-shaped UFO, known to pilots as a Foo Fighter, that also crashes, at 171E, 42N, part way between the western Hawaiian Islands and the Aleutians. (Date is based on Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, followed by Japanese surrender August 14, 1945.) The United States submarine Zeus Faber, under Captain Sandford and XO Johansen, is dispatched to locate the planes, which it does. When a Japanese destroyer approaches, the submarine hides on silent running, and crew members develop radiation burns. Sandford is taken over by an alien that can occupy human bodies, and appears to the crew to be acting irrationally. The alien resides in 50 weight diesel oil, as a medium. When it occupies a human body, it gives the appearance of diesel oil within the eyeball. Johanson seals the Captain in the ward room, and takes the submarine back to Pearl Harbor. The other crew in the ward room kill Sandford, and diesel oil evacuates the body. Of 144 men, only 7 survive, some of whom are hospitalized for years. They never receive an explanation. Johansen remains on active duty, so apparently is not disciplined for technical mutiny. The UFO, the aircraft and the nuclear bomb are all left in place on the ocean floor. The alien may or may not have returned to America. (Piper Maru, Apocrypha, 731 & Nisei) June 29-July 2, 1947 One of two brothers named Arthur Dales (not the one in the FBI in the 1950s) is a police officer in Roswell, NM, and is assigned to protect negro baseball star Josh Exley from racist threats that the game of baseball should be kept white. Exley plays for an all-negro team called the Roswell Grays. Dales ends up traveling on the team bus, and at night, in a lightning storm, Exley's reflection in the bus window appears to be the image of a gray alien. The next day, during a game, Exley is hit on the head with a ball and knocked out. He murmurs words in an unknown language and claims to be from Macon, Georgia. Dales finds green acid on the glove used to cushion Exley's head and sends it off to be tested. Dales calls the Macon police and learns that Josh Exley was a six year old child that disappeared about the time Exley arrived in Roswell. The Macon police officer Dales talks with is really a bounty hunter. Exley denies to Dales that he was ever in Macon. Dales thinks Exley "tanked" the game that day because American League scouts were there and he did not want to be recruited into the major leagues, because Exley has a secret. That night, Dales sees a gray alien in Exley's room, wearing a baseball cap and holding a bat. Dales faints at the sight, but the alien wakes him up and tells him he is Exley -- this is his real face. Exley morphs into a pretty girl to prove his claim. The next day they talk more. Exley says his people guard their privacy and don't allow intermingling, but when he discovered baseball he immediately fell in love. The bounty hunter arrives in Roswell, looking for Exley. Posing as Exley, he goes to the lab and kills the lab technician who was testing the acid on the glove. Dales finds Exley and warns him that a witness claims he killed a man. Exley says he talked "with his family" and they want him to come home. He leaves, supposedly to go back home, and several "men in black" question Dales. Exley actually, however, returns to the baseball team and plays a night game. After a home run, several men in the white sheets of the Ku Klux Klan and carrying guns ride up on horses. Exley has gotten too good and the KKK wants to keep the game of baseball white-only. They threaten Exley, but the white baseball team overcomes the klansmen, one of whom, knocked unconscious, is seen to be a gray alien. Everyone else runs off and Exley confronts the bounty hunter, who quickly awakes. The bounty hunter says he warned Exley and tells him to show his true face so he can die with honor. Exley does not morph. Dales drives up as Exley is killed. The bounty hunter escapes and Dales concentrates on Exley, who is dying Exley warns Dales that his blood is like acid, but Dales finds only red blood. Exley apparently loved the game of baseball so much that it transformed him into a human, but Mulder can't figure out if the story is metaphorical. (All events described by Dales to Mulder in The Unnatural.) July 4, 1947 The alleged Roswell New Mexico UFO incident, on or about this date. On July 8 a news release is issued from Roswell Army Air Field claiming to have recovered a crashed "disk." The following day, however, another news release says it was actually the remains of a weather balloon. (Historical accounts.) Deep Throat later says that alien DNA was first obtained in 1947, but that Roswell was a smoke screen, and that a half dozen better samples were obtained between 1947 and 1994. (The Erlenmeyer Flask) In The Unnatural, Mulder said Josh Exley disappeared without a trace, although he was seen to be killed by the bounty hunter. Did the men in black recover his body, then stage a UFO hoax to cover their tracks? In Two Fathers, several references are made to "50 years, since Roswell." Regardless of whether it was a UFO crash or not, apparently contact is made at Roswell between the alien colonists and the government. As a result of whatever happens at Roswell, a secret government project begins within the State Department to investigate and study the aliens. The Project is staffed with German scientists given immunity from war crimes and allowed to continue the eugenic experiments of the Third Reich. Japanese scientists also participate in the work. Deep Throat also says a super-secret meeting of representatives of many nations meets in 1947 to agree that any alien survivors of UFO crashes shall be exterminated. (E.B.E.) At another time, he says this order was from Security Council Resolution 1013. (Musings...) In End Game, the Samantha clone claimed that two aliens came to Earth in the 1940s and produced several identical clones as progeny, known later as the Gregor clones. Samantha claimed that the aliens were combining human and alien DNA in order to eliminate their identical nature. She said that they believe that the human stewardship of the planet is being forsaken and that they will become the natural heirs of the planet. The clone may have been misleading Mulder, but there may also be some germ of truth in the story. September 24, 1947 It has also often been reported that in 1947, the Top Secret US Government project known as Majestic 12, or MJ-12, is created, possibly by a special classified executive order of President Truman on 24 September, 1947. According to some reports, membership of MJ-12 included Dr. Detlev Bronk and Dr. Jerome Hunsaker, names mentioned by Dana Scully in her Senior Thesis. (Popular reports and Musings...) 1950s In McMinnville, Oregon, a UFO is photographed above a field. This photograph is the first picture shown in the X-Files opening credits. Young military officers Bill Mulder and Alvin Kurtzweil are recruited to "the Project." Kurtzweil eventually becomes disillusioned, and leaves. He becomes an OB/GYN doctor, and publishes several books about doomsday ahead, but he is generally discounted. Bill Mulder remains with the Project for many years, operating under the cover of being employed by the State Department. Mulder, however, has ethical problems with the way the Project is run. (Movie) 1952 Operatives of the conspiracy use positions of power in the House Un-American Activities Committee to pursue their goals. (Travelers) June 24, 1952 One of two brothers named Arthur Dale (not the one who was a police officer in Roswell, NM) and his partner, Agent Hayes Michel, arrest Edward Skur for failing to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee of the US Congress. Dale is later told that Skur has hung himself in his jail cell and there are photographs that it is later learn are faked. Dale goes to the Skur home to tell Mrs. Skur of her husband's death, but encounters Edward Skur there. They struggle and Dale sees something attempting to emerge from Skur's mouth, but there is a disturbance and Skur runs off. Dale files his report but the HUAC prosecutor, Mr. Cohn, convinces him to change his report to not identify Skur, saying that some things must be kept from the public. Skur's name keeps coming up in Dale's life. He and Michels are called to the home of a former German scientist who is dead with all of the internal organs of his body missing. A note Dale finds there summons Dale to a secret meeting with Bill Mulder who tells him that Skur is a patriot. He and two other men had something done to them against their will and Skur wants vengeance. It becomes clear to Dale that HUAC is a cover-up for a more sinister conspiracy within the American government. Skur thinks Dale and Michel are part of the plot against him. Dale calls Michel's home, but Skur has already been there and Michel is dead. Viewers see some kind of living organism exit Skur's mouth to kill Michel -- apparently entering his body and destroying the internal organs. Later, when Dale is at the Michel crime scene, Cohn arrives and proclaims "national security" to have the body removed. Dale investigates the other two men identified by Bill Mulder. One, Gissing, was found dead in the last few days alongside another German scientist, whose internal organs were all missing. An autopsy finds a living organism inside Gissing's throat, held in by sutures. Dale calls on Mrs. Skur and accuses her of knowing her husband is still alive. He says Skur was the victim of Xenotransplantation -- the process of grafting another living organism into a human body. He says German scientists experimented with it during WWII. When Dale leaves, Mrs. Skur goes to her husband in a backyard fallout shelter, the organism emerges from his mouth and kills her. Dale is taken to J. Edgar Hoover who lectures him about the communist threat and gives Dales one chance to save himself. He is sent to an arranged meeting with Skur, wearing a hidden transmitter. Bill Mulder is one of the escorts to the meeting site. Skur tells Dale that "they" want Dale dead. They fight and the organism begins to emerge from Skur's mouth but Dale manages to handcuff Skur and escape death. Bill Mulder eventually helps Skur escape captivity. (Travelers) 1953 Beginning this year, Majestic begins flying aircraft using antigravity propulsion systems. It is learned that antigravity propulsion operates by bending space-time. It is also learned that lost time is a common symptom of close proximity to antigravity propulsion systems.(Dreamland)(Dreamland is not clear, but the antigravity propulsion system is apparently based on UFO technology. If so, the technology was apparently obtained after the Roswell crash.) October 13, 1961 Fox William Mulder is born, son of William and Tina Mulder. The family home is in Chilmark, on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, near Otis Air Force Base and Camp Edwards Military Reservation on the mainland. The family also has a summer home in Qounochontaug, RI, (pronounced QUAN-uh- kah-tagh) near US Highway 1 in southwest Rhode Island. William Mulder allegedly works for the State Department, but in fact is deeply involved in the work of The Conspiracy. Fox presently discovers he is red-green color blind. (Bill Mulder calls Fox a one year old in a Musings... scene identified as October 1962. Some fan sources once gave October 11th as Fox's birthday. The 13th was on the file folder in Paperclip, and repeated on the driver's license in Small Potatoes.) In "The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati" the Cigarette Smoking Man claims to be Fox Mulder's father. Later in the episode, Diana Fowley makes a statement confirming the claim. The circumstances are not clear. February 23, 1964 Dana Katherine Scully is born to William and Margaret "Maggie" Scully. (One Breath) Her birth certificate (seen in Paper Clip) says the family lives at 1170 W. 53 Road, Annapolis, MD. (February 23 established in Lazarus.) Her two brothers are Bill Junior and Charlie. Their exact ages are unknown, although in "Roland" Dana says one brother is older and one younger. Dana's older sister, Melissa, was born in 1962. (Apocrypha) Presumably Bill, Jr., is the eldest son, both because of his name and because he tends to act like an older brother in various settings. October 13, 1973 (This entire date entry is based on One Son.) State Department staff members have learned that the aliens encountered at Roswell are planning to colonize Earth in a process that will kill all humans. For reasons that are not completely clear, the Colonists negotiate to delay the colonization while the members of the Project develop both a means of distributing the alien Black Oil virus, as well as develop a race of human-alien hybrids that is immune to the Black Oil. The operatives of the project take a vote and agree to work with the Colonists as a way of stalling for time while they try to develop a defense against the Black Oil. In this way, the Conspiracy is born, and the new Consortium is not controlled by any government. Bill Mulder is the only dissenting vote. When the aliens provide an alien fetus to the Consortium, providing DNA with which to develop the hybrids, Mulder devises a plan to use the DNA to create a vaccine, so that the entire human population might be saved. When the humans agree to help the Colonists, the aliens demand that each give up a child or other loved one into the custody of the colonists, with the promise that they will be returned when the colonization begins. The plan is that they, as well as the members and other family of the Consortium, will receive the alien genes and become hybrids themselves. It is unclear why the Colonists need help from humans, and why they are willing to wait for years for the hybrids to be developed. It is also unclear what use the Colonists would have for immune hybrids. A dark, shadowy organization of people, mostly men, the Consortium eventually includes members from many countries. Conspiracy leaders and operatives do not hesitate at murder and other crimes to further the goals of the Conspiracy. The conspiracy is also also known as the Consortium and the Syndicate. (Two Fathers, etc.) Conrad Strughold becomes involved at some point and gains a position of authority in the Consortium. Meetings involving him are generally held in London, as opposed to most meetings of the Consortium which are held in New York. This suggests that he may be unable to legally enter the United States. As time goes by, and no vaccine is developed, some members of the Consortium come to believe that slavery for the human race is better than death. They become more interested in their personal futures and gaining preferred status from the Colonists. Other members of the Consortium, however, apparently remain pure to the original goal of defeating the Colonists. November 1973?? In Demons, Mulder experiences a series of flashbacks to events in his family's summer cottage in Rhode Island during which Bill Mulder apparently tells his wife that Samantha must be taken. In the flashback, the Mulders argue and the Smoking Man is present -- at one point calling young Fox a spy. Closed captioning reveals Mrs. Mulder repeatedly says "not Samantha," and Bill Mulder says that the orders came down from on high. Bill Mulder and the Smoking Man also argue during the flashbacks, which may or may not be true, due to the drugs Mulder received that induced the flashbacks. Tina Mulder later (in Demons) says her husband asked her to decide which child should be taken, but she could not and hated her husband for making the choice. The evidence in a West Virginia mine indicates that Fox was originally chosen, but the decision was changed, with Samantha ultimately taken. Does that mean William Mulder chose Fox to be taken, and somehow his decision was overridden? Or that Bill changed his mind about which of his children would grow up to make the best operative against the Colonists? November 27, 1973 Samantha Mulder and Cassandra Spender both disappear. On this day Gerald R. Ford is confirmed as Vice President of the United States. Also on this date, Rosemary Woods admits that she was responsible for erasure of some, but not all of the 18 minute gap on a tape recorded in President Nixon's office. (Historical) The date is given in the episode Conduit, which gives Samantha's address at the time as 2790 Vine Street, Chilmark, Mass, different from the address on her smallpox vaccination certificate. It is repeated in Two Fathers and One Son, which makes clear that both women were taken on the same day. Cassandra Spender, wife of C.G.M. Spender, is later confirmed to have been kidnapped repeatedly by the government conspiracy, working to make her a human-alien hybrid. C.G.M. Spender is later determined to be an alias of the Cigarette Smoking Man. (Two Fathers) Someone who is apparently Cassandra is seen in One Son preparing to enter the alien spacecraft along with other loved ones of the Consortium members. Either this delivery of family members took place after November 27th or it was not really Cassandra seen on screen. Samantha is said in One Son to have been taken later than the others, because Bill Mulder delayed "coming to his senses" about the plan. In the X-Files Movie novelization, the Well Manicured Man tells Fox Mulder that his father refused to believe that victory against the Colonists consists of merely staying alive. WMM says that Samantha was abducted, to be taken to a cloning program so she would become immune and survive. WMM also says that Bill Mulder's hope for FOX was that he would uncover the truth about the Project and do everything possible to stop it. It is unclear why Cassandra was apparently taken by the aliens but returned for experimentation. Samantha is taken just as her older brother, Fox, is getting ready to watch his favorite TV program, The Magician, starring Bill Bixby. Their parents are next door, visiting the Galbrands. (Little Green Men) In Conduit, Mulder's voice on his hypnosis tape says as Samantha is being taken, he hears a voice in his head saying she will return someday, which is something he says "I want to believe." Fox comes to believe Samantha has been kidnapped by aliens. Mr. and Mrs. Mulder separate soon after and divorce. William Mulder later sells the house in Chilmark and buys a home in West Tisbury, also on Martha's Vineyard. (Paper Hearts) After her divorce, Mrs. Mulder later lives in Greenwich, Connecticut, keeping much of her property in storage in the basement, including a vacuum cleaner. (731 & Nisei; Paper Hearts) By Sein Und Seit she is living in an apartment, rather than a house. Samantha ends up in the care of C.G.M. Spender and she lives with his family in residential quarters on the April Air Force Base in California. Jeffrey spender is apparently living with the family, as well. Both of the children's hand prints are placed in fresh concrete outside the family home. Samantha is subjected to repeated tests that she comes to hate. (Closure) Young Fox has a recurring nightmare in which he wakes up and thinks he is the only person left in the world. He is always reassured to find his father in the study, eating sunflower seeds. (Aubrey) He often closes his eyes when he climbs the stairs of his house, hoping that he will open them again and his sister will be in her room. (Conduit) August 1977 A researcher working with the Ohio State University finds data on a signal received that was thirty times stronger than the galactic background, on a wavelength of 21 centimeters. He is so impressed that he writes "WOW" on the printout. The signal comes to be known as the "WOW Signal," and is considered the best evidence to date of a possible extraterrestrial transmission, although it is not considered to be definitive evidence. (Historical fact, mentioned in Little Green Men February 23, 1979 On Dana's fifteenth birthday, Margaret Scully gives her daughter a necklace consisting of a gold cross on a gold chain. (Ascension) (Note: In Christmas Carol, Dana has a dream remembering receiving the necklace at Christmas, 2 to 3 years earlier. Since dreams are not always true, we can't tell for sure when she received it.) October 23, 1979 Unable to stand the tests any longer, Samantha Mulder, age 14, runs away from the Spender home at April Air Force Base in California. She believes that those performing the tests have taken her memories -- she has only vague memories of a brother. She is picked up by police as a runaway and taken to Dominic Savio Memorial Hospital, suffering from paranoia and what are considered to be self-inflicted wounds. She gives no name and allows no one but the emergency room nurse, Arbutus Ray, to touch her. As Samantha sleeps, Ray has a brief vision of Samantha dead in her bed, but the vision quickly passes and Samantha is fine. Late that night, a group of men arrives to take Samantha, but the nurse finds that Samantha has disappeared from a locked hospital room, never to be seen again. (Closure) 1986 Fox Mulder completes his Oxford degree in Psychology. In the Pilot, Mulder tells Scully "I went off to school in England, I came back, got recruited by the Bureau..." implying his entire college career may have been in England. (1986 from resume screen in Unusual Suspects.) In The End, the Lone Gunmen say that Diana Fowley was Mulder's "chickadee" at the time he graduated from the FBI Academy, in 1986. On the other hand, Diana implied that she and Mulder knew each other in 1991, about the time she graduated from the FBI Academy. One conclusion is that they had a relationship dating back to 1986, and she applied to the FBI later. Sometime in 1986 Gibson Praise is born. Mulder later finds evidence suggesting that Gibson has alien DNA, allowing him to read minds. (The End) 1988 Members of the high school class of 1989 of Bellefleur, Oregon, begin suffering a series of unexplained disappearances and deaths. Others suffer from what appears to post traumatic stress syndrome. (Pilot) May 1989 Unusual Suspects. The trio of paranoid conspiracy theorists known as The Lone Gunmen meet and begin working together. At a consumer electronics show in Baltimore, Byers enlists the assistance of Melvin Frohike and Langly to help a women who claims her three year old daughter has been kidnapped by a psychopathic ex-boyfriend. The two are competing hackers, and are each selling equipment to steal and descramble cable television service. The plot thickens when Susanne identifies Mulder, also attending the show, as the ex-boyfriend, and when Langly discovers that the woman, Susanne Modeski, is wanted by the FBI. Susanne explains that she was a research scientist at the Army Advanced Weapons facility at Whitestone, NM. She developed a gas that causes fear and paranoia, that the military plans to test on civilians. They track the material to a warehouse, where they find the gas in a shipment of asthma inhalers. Mulder follows them, and there is a gunfight between Mulder and two agents of the Conspiracy, who want to take Susanne into custody. Suzanne kills them when they are about to kill Mulder. Mulder inhales some of the paranoia gas, and writhes on the floor, undressing. Conspiracy operatives lead by X arrive to sanitize the site. They leave Byers, Frohike and Langly unharmed, with the caution to "behave." X specifically instructs his operatives to not touch Mulder. Susanne escapes. Mulder thinks he sees the crew sanitizing the site as aliens, although they are human. The Lone Gunmen trace Susanne and she admonishes them to tell as many people as they can about the government conspiracy. They witness Susanne being taken into custody by X. (Richard Belzer guest stars as Lt. Munch, his character from "Homicide: Life on the Street." Langly's last name, reported to be "Ringo" in early scripts, did not make it into the final edit of this episode.) In "Three of a Kind," we learn that Suzanne was held captive and possibly subjected to medical tests. Eventually Grant Ellis, another employee of the Advanced Weapons Facility, rescues her. She does not trust him for a long time, but eventually comes to believe that he is working from within to undermine the project. By 1999 she will be engaged to him. June 16, 1989 Mulder works with Dr. Heits Werber to use regression therapy to remember the night his sister disappeared. He remembers a voice in his head telling him that Samantha will not be harmed and will one day return. Mulder tells Werber that "I want to believe" that voice. (Werber mentioned in Pilot, June 16 given in Conduit) In addition to the audio tape seen in Conduit, a videotape recording is made, seen in Closure. 1990s?? At some point, possibly in the 1990s or possibly much earlier, a team of Russian geologists locates rock from the Tunguska meteorite. The rock contains an organism, probably extraterrestrial in origin, that invades human bodies. It comes to be called the "Black Cancer." Russians begin perfecting a vaccination. Eventually the Conspiracy learns of its existence and begins efforts to acquire samples of the rock and organism. Working for the conspiracy, Dr. Bonita Charre-Sayre uses her position as a consulting physician for a chain of convalescent homes to test patients with Black Cancer, without their knowledge. She begins a relationship with the Well Manicured Man. She also begins advocating the destruction of the last samples of smallpox virus, held in research laboratories following eradication of the disease. This position is the result of her secret knowledge of the use of smallpox by the Conspiracy. The Russian government may have sent Alex Krycek to America as a mole to infiltrate the Conspiracy with the ultimate plan of ending Conspiracy Black Cancer research. On the other hand, maybe the Russians did not know that Alex was an agent of the Consortium, or maybe somebody else. It is hard telling. (Terma) 1990 At least two pilots at Ellens AFB begin acting strangely in a way Scully later says is typical of reaction to extreme stress. (Deep Throat) Early 1990 Dana Scully completes medical training. The FBI recruits her during final months of her residency and she enrolls in the 15-week FBI Academy training course. Her parents consider her joining the FBI to be an act of rebellion, but Dana sees it as a place where she can distinguish herself. (Pilot) Late 1990 or Early 1991 Mulder's success in violent crimes allows him a certain latitude to pursue his own interests. He discovers the X-Files. (Pilot) Circa 1991 In 1994 Deep Throat says that only recently has technology been available for the Conspiracy to manipulate alien DNA, accomplish combinations of human and alien DNA, run from Los Alamos. He says Zeus Storage, somewhere in the Washington DC area, is where the first DNA transplant was made, and the first human/alien hybrid created, with six terminally ill human subjects volunteering. Dr. William Sakar recovers as the result of ET gene therapy, developing inhuman strength and the ability to breath under water and green caustic blood. A subject of study, Sakar soon becomes concerned that Conspiracy will not let him live -- if you believe Deep Throat. (The Erlenmeyer Flask) December 1991 Mulder receives the assignment he has desired since joining the FBI, the X-Files, ending his partnership with Lamana. (Musings...) One of his first actions is to open an X-File on his missing sister. (Conduit) December 24, 1991 At Dogway, West Virginia, a UFO crashes, and a critically injured EBE is recovered by the UFO recovery team working for Deep Throat. The EBE is placed in an intensive care unit. Humans working around the alien use gas masks. This could be because the air needed by the alien is unbreathable to humans or because the alien's blood generates noxious gas. It has also been suggested that Deep Throat, the Smoking Man and their associates already know about the Black Cancer and the retrovirus, and the gas mask is to protect them from infection. Deep Throat comments that the craft matches the dimensions of a UFO seen over Hanoi that the Marines could not shoot down when he was with The Company (CIA). (Of course, if they couldn't shoot it down, how did they learn its dimensions?) The Cigarette Smoking Man says it comes at a bad time, because the planted Roswell story is gaining momentum. Russian forces track the UFO, and pinpointed touchdown. KGB, Chinese, British, and German operatives probably advance on the compound where the EBE is held. The Cigarette Smoking Man calls Deep Throat by the first name "Ronald," indistinct in the episode, but contained in the closed captioning text. Deep Throat unwillingly executes the EBE, citing Security Council Resolution 1013, stating that any country capturing an EBE is responsible for its immediate extermination, even though a living EBE could advance Bill Mulder's project enormously. Deep Throat states "Tonight we have a new enemy," meaning the EBE. He calls himself The Liar and the Smoking Man The Killer. The Cigarette Smoking Man says Deep Throat's lies have killed many people. The Cigarette Smoking Man claims to Deep Throat that he has never killed anybody, or any thing. Deep Throat killing the EBE causes the Smoking Man to remove his nicotine patch. (All entries this date from Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man.) February 1992 Mulder's work attracts the attention of the Conspiracy. They look for a way to reign Mulder in without making him a martyr. He tries to access certain information, but is blocked by higher offices. (Pilot) NICAP, the National Investigation committee on Aerial Phenomenon, begins following the work of Agent Mulder. Using the Freedom of Information Act, NICAP obtains Mulder's travel vouchers, to track his investigations. March 7, 1992 Pilot Episode After two years with the FBI, Dana Scully is assigned to the X-Files. Mulder initially distrusts Scully, believing she has been assigned to debunk his work. At face value, her assignment is to bring a rigorous scientific perspective to them. In fact, Scully really has been assigned to debunk the X-Files by the international conspiracy that feels Mulder's work is dangerous to them. The Cigarette Smoking Man attends the meeting Assistant Dire3ctor Blevins' office in which Scully receives the assignment, but does not speak. He also uses electronic listening devices to listen in on Mulder and Scully's first meeting. (Musings...) Mulder tells Scully that he has read her Senior thesis, and liked it. (Pilot) She apparently sent it to him as a partial introduction, given that it dealt with MJ-12. (Musings...) On their first case, they investigate disappearances of teenagers. Four teenagers in Oregon have been found dead, with two puncture wounds on their backs. Traveling to Oregon, their airplane experiences unexpected turbulence. Mulder arranges to have a grave of one of the victims, Ray Soams, exhumed and a body is found in the coffin that is not human -- possibly what would commonly be called a gray alien. Inside the nose of the body is a fragment of metal they cannot identify. they also learn that two additional teenagers, Billy Miles and Peggy Odell, are institutionalized. Peggy is paranoid and Billy is catatonic. Mulder suspects that they have been abducted but Scully thinks the answer must be in the forest, where the victims have been found. Visiting the crime scene area at night, they are warned off by a sheriff's deputy, Billy's father. As they drive away, down a rural highway, their car loses power, they experience a bright flash of light, and clocks are nine minutes later than they had been. Mulder is thrilled to experience unexplained time loss, often reported in connection with UFO sightings. Later that evening, Scully believes that she finds puncture wounds on her hip, similar to those found on the teenagers. After Mulder checks them out, allowing him to see her in her underwear, Mulder proclaims them mosquito bites. As she recovers from her scare, Mulder tells Scully about his sister's disappearance and about how his passion to locate her lead him to the X-Files. someone has been blocking his attempts to access classified government information. Connections he has made in Congress have protected him, to a certain extent. He tells her about his hypnotic regression and the memories of Samantha's abduction. As they talk, they receive an anonymous phone call saying that Peggy Odell is dead. Peggy ran out of the forest in front of a semi-truck. While they are at the scene, their motel burns, destroying the x-rays and pictures of the alien body. At the motel fire, they are approached by another teenaged girl, Teresa, who has repeatedly woken up in the forest. Her father is the medical examiner who withheld information on the marks from his reports. He takes her away and the agents discover that the bodies have been removed from the other graves. Mulder suspects that Billy Miles is responsible, in spite of his vegetative state. Something in the forest summons the teenagers, Mulder thinks. Visiting Billy, Scully discovers dirt on his feet like what she found at the crime scene in the forest. They return to the forest to take another sample, to be sure, and find Billy and Teresa, although Billy's father tries to black them. The teenagers are surrounded by a vortex and listed into the air. After a flash of light, both awake and with no memory of what has happened and with the marks on their backs gone. Episode concludes March 22 with Billy in hypnotic regression telling about how the light took him away and told him to gather the others for tests. Blevins and the other FBI officials criticize Scully's reports as having insufficient scientific basis because she cannot substantiate her observations. She hands Blevins the metal fragment removed from the unidentified body. Lab tests could not identify it. As the episode ends, the Cigarette Smoking Man is seen to place the bottle holding the fragment in a storage box with other similar fragments in a huge secret storage area labeled as being in the Pentagon. ??? 1992 Deep Throat Deep Throat first approaches Mulder in the restroom of a lounge in Washington DC, where Mulder had met Scully, warning Mulder to leave a case of a missing USAF pilot alone. Mulder infiltrates Ellens Air Force Base in southwest Idaho. Deep Throat tells him that aliens have "been here for a long, long time." Mulder suspects that the military is testing aircraft based on UFO technology at Ellens AFB. We see a picture of a triangular "UFO," photographed in the Ellens area. Is this the UFO recovered in West Virginia on December 24, 1991? If not, it is certainly based in part on that UFO. It also appears to have a shape similar to the Pacific Ocean Foo Fighter, salvaged in 1995. It is demonstrated that the Conspiracy has the capability to selectively erase human memory. August 26, 1993 Conduit Mulder and Scully visit Lake Okoboji, in northwest Iowa. Mention is made of the "Sioux City County Sheriff," although Sioux City is over an hour drive from Lake Okoboji, in a different county. The article from the tabloid newspaper projected on the screen in Mulder's office incorrectly spells the lake "Okobogee." Darlene Morris tells them of her experience as a Girl Scout in 1967, and of the abduction of her daughter, Ruby. Her son, Kevin, seems to be receiving binary data from the static on his television, which the NSA operative Holtzman tells Mulder is a classified defense satellite transmission. Scully recognizes a portion of J.S. Bach's Brandenberg Concertos. A biker bartender displays evidence of severe radiation burns on his ear. Ruby is eventually found in a coma, displaying evidence of prolonged weightlessness. November 7, 1993 Ice At Icy Cape, Alaska, all of the members of an ice drilling team kill each other, or themselves, leaving behind the cryptic warning, "we're not who we are." Mulder and Scully join a team heading for the drilling station to investigate. They discover a worm-like organism that infects bodies, driving the hosts insane. The worms came from ice cores that were drilled deep into an ancient meteor crater under the ice. It seems that they came from space a quarter of a million years ago, where they were used to an ammonia environment. The pilot, named Bear, becomes infected by the bite of a dog they find at the drilling station. The man dies when the worm is extracted from his body. During the night another team member is killed, and it is clear that one of the remaining four team members is also infected. Suspicion centers on Mulder, who found the body. Scully discovers that the larvae of two worms will not coexist in the same human body, proving it with the infected dog. When the real infected team member is identified, the other woman, a second worm is placed in her body, and the worms kill each other. The team is evacuated and Mulder and Scully are pronounced uninfected. Mulder wants to return to the drilling station with a team better equipped for genetic study of the worms, but he is informed that 45 minutes after they were evacuated, the entire complex was burned by the government. As a result of the events of this episode, Mulder and Scully come to realize how much they have come to trust each other. Note: The worms in this episode may well have been the genesis for the X-Files writers of the concept of the Black Oil. Mid/Late 1993???? Space Mulder and Scully investigate the space program after receiving information that someone knew about a sabotaged component. The Space Shuttle Discovery suffers an oxygen leak in orbit, apparently after encountering an unidentified craft in orbit. Astronaut Marcus Aurelius Belt, Shuttle program chief, fears the space program will be killed if the shuttle does not launch its payload. He has apparently been brainwashed by aliens or the Conspiracy. While he is involved in sabotage of the shuttle and the Mars Observer, he also attempts to leak information to allow the sabotage to be discovered. Belt has a recurring dream in which he remembers being approached by another craft during a space walk. He remembers a face that is very similar to the alleged face seen from orbit on the surface of Mars. He is also briefly seen to morph uncontrolably so that his face resembles that face. He ends up jumping to his death from an upper floor of a hospital. The Shuttle lands safely, because of information he given to Mulder. (Interpretation of this episode is very difficult. Your author's best guess is that the Conspiracy sent a spacecraft based on alien technology to intercept the shuttle. They may have used hypnosis to make Belt participate in sabotage, and alien DNA therapy to cause him to morph. He could have been an early experiment in morphing. While we did not see his his body after the fall, might it have bled green ooze?) ??? 1993 Fallen Angel A UFO, first detected by Air Force tracking over Connecticut, crashes near Townsend, in eastern Wisconsin. "Fallen Angel" is identified as the term for a downed UFO, and UFO recovery is identified as "Operation Falcon," commanded by Colonel Calvin Henderson. The public is told a train derailment has released toxic waste. An invisible survivor of the crash kills several people, by severe radiation burns (similar to burns associated with the entity in Piper Maru, et al). Epileptic Max Fenig, of NICAP, a South Dakota native, disappears, apparently taken by a second, larger UFO. Deep Throat blocks an investigative committee from closing the X-Files. Max is eventually returned, and continues his efforts to learn the truth about his repeated abductions. He sends frequent letters to his sister, describing his efforts in detail. (Tempus Fugit) ??? 1993 Eve In Greenwich, Connecticut, joggers find Joel Simmons dead. His daughter Tina says she was only away from him for a few minutes, and remembers nothing, but most of his blood is missing. Mulder suspects a phenomenon similar to cattle mutilations. Digitalis was found in his system. Tina's mother died two years earlier, so Tina is taken to the Fairfield County Social Services Hostel. She tells Mulder and Scully that "there was red lightning" and that "men from the clouds" were after her father. That night, Tina's room is broken into and she disappears. An almost identical case is reported in Marin County, California. Doug Reardon also died from loss of blood, had digitalis in his system, and died at the exact same moment as Joel Simmons. His daughter, Cindy, is identical to Tina, but she was not adopted. The Reardons tried for years to have a baby, and finally succeed with the help of the Luther Stape Center for Reproductive Medicine in San Francisco. The agents learn that the Simmons were also treated there, before moving to Connecticut in 1991. Dr. Sally Kendrick was their doctor -- a resident there in 1985 after graduating first in her class at Yale Medical School. She had previously received a PhD in Biogenetics. She was fired for suspicion of experimenting with eugenics, censured by the AMA and disappeared. Deep Throat tells Mulder about the Litchfield Experiment, begun in the early 1950s. A group of "genetically controlled" children was raised in a secure compound. The boys were called Adam and the girls Eve. He directs Mulder to the Whiting Institute for the Criminally Insane, where they meet Eve 6 in a darkened, padded room. She is in restraints because she attacked a guard. She says her IQ is around 265, and she has 56 chromosomes, resulting in heightened strength, intelligence and psychosis. She has pictures of all of the Eve clones as children, and they all look like Tina and Cindy. It is clear Eve 7, as Sally Kendrick, cloned herself. Cindy is abducted by Eve 7. They arrive at the Point Reyes National Seashore north of San Francisco where Tina is waiting. Eve 7 explains that she escaped and was raised by caring foster parents and that proper upbringing can reduce the psychosis, but Tina and Cindy kill her by putting digitalis in her drink. They raised the foxglove and made the digitalis themselves. They have not been in contact with each other but "just knew" about each other. The motel manager reports the suspicious girls and Mulder and Scully find Tina and Cindy in the motel room with the dead Eve. Driving them back to San Francisco at night, Mulder and Scully stop with the girls at a truck stop and the girls almost escape. They are taken back into custody and end up at the Whiting Institute next to Eve 6 in cells labeled Eve 9 and Eve 10. Eve 8 infiltrates the institute. Cindy and Tina say they "just knew" that Eve 8 would be coming. While we do not see it, the implication is that all of the Eves escape. January 1994??? Genderbender Outside Germantown, Maryland, a man dies after having sex with a woman he picked up in a bar. After his death, the woman transforms into a man. Mulder has been tracking four similar deaths. Each victim was swamped with phemerones containing human DNA -- possibly enough to trigger anaphylactic shock. The first death was near a colony of religious isolationists called the Kindred. They are famous for pottery, and traces of the native clay of that area were found on the latest murder victim. Mulder and Scully travel to Steveston, Massachusetts, to learn more about the Kindred. In town, Scully talks with Brother Andrew, a male member of the Kindred. When she shakes hands with him she is strongly affected. The agents visit the sect, having to walk the last mile because of the primitive road. The Kindred intercept them along the road, escort them to the farm, and feed then supper. They pray "for the day of the coming, the moment of our release." The Kindred tell the agents little of importance. An older man at the table chokes to death, and nobody helps him. Many of the faces of the Kindred are the same as on photographs taken in the 1930s. Scully says they have probably been inbreeding, but Mulder thinks there may be something stranger going on. Mulder and Scully sneak back to the Kindred farm after dark and witness a strange ritual in which the man who died is covered with clay in an underground tunnel. The man appears to return to life. Mulder is almost caught in the tunnel by the Kindred, but escapes. Meanwhile Scully meets Brother Andrew. He tells her that the killer is Brother Martin, his best friend, who has left the farm. Andrew knows that Martin poisons the victims with phemerones. Her judgment is overwhelmed by the phemerones Andrew emits and Mulder narrowly saves her from having sex with Brother Andrew. Meanwhile, the killer kills again, and as a women selects yet another victim. A police officer interrupts, however, saving the man's life. The murder quickly transforms into a man and punches out the cop. Mulder and Scully track Martin to a hotel and find another victim. They capture Martin, but the Kindred intercept them in a back alley near the hotel and take Martin away. As soon as they round a corner they disappear. Back at the Kindred farm, Mulder and Scully find the property abandoned, the tunnels filled in and nothing but a large crop circle in one of the fields. (The implication is that the Kindred are aliens, and leave on an alien spacecraft. In one scene, the female version of Martin says that the Kindred are different from humans and that he/she will be punished by the Kindred, but that the date of their departure is approaching and that they will not leave Martin behind. There is no firm date given in this episode. It is after Beyond the Sea, which was set after Christmas, and was first broadcast January 21, 1994.) Spring 1994 E.B.E. An Iraqi jet shoots down a UFO. The Fallen Angel team recovers the wreckage, and ships it cross country by semi truck. Near Reagan, Tennessee, the driver sights a UFO, and Mulder and Scully are called in to investigate. We meet the staff of Lone Gunman, Frohike, Langly and Byers. They publish "The Magic Bullet Newsletter," working in an office in a warehouse, and tell Mulder and Scully about a dark network behind the government. Scully discovers an electronic eavesdropping device. Deep Throat lies to Mulder to steer him away from actually finding the UFO. In spite of this, Mulder and Scully locate a secret installation near Mattawa, Washington, where the Extraterrestrial Biological Entity from the crashed UFO was taken. Deep Throat tells Mulder the E.B.E has died (been killed). Deep Throat tells Mulder that after the Roswell incident in 1947, an ultra secret conference of many nations agreed that should any EBE survive a crash, the nation recovering the EBE would have the responsibility of killing it. Deep Throat claims to have been one of the three men to have exterminated an alien, with the CIA in Vietnam. He says the death of that innocent alien haunts him and that is why he sought out Mulder, so that some day, through him, the truth may be known. Mulder, though, is not sure he believes Deep Throat's story. (Deep Throat mentions that pitchers and catchers report for spring training this week.) May 8, 1994 The Erlenmeyer Flask After a 60 mile high speed car chase, a man disappears in a harbor at Ardis, Maryland, after being shot, and bleeding blue-green blood. Dr. Terrance Berube, owner of the stolen car, is a researcher in the Human Genome Project, and is killed by a "man in black." Phone records leads Mulder to Zeus Storage, at 1616 Pandora Street, where he finds what appears to be human clones growing in vats of liquid. When he returns, however, the vats have been removed, by forces other than those of Deep Throat. Deep Throat says while alien DNA samples have been available since 1947, only recently has the technology existed to manipulate it, run from Los Alamos. He says Zeus Storage is where the first DNA transplant was made, and the first human/alien hybrid created, with six terminally ill human subjects volunteering. Dr. William Sakar recovers as the result of ET gene therapy, developing inhuman strength and the ability to breath under water. Deep Throat says Sakar fled an effort to kill him, because the conspiracy does not want crossbreeds living among society, ending up in the car chase. Sakar survives under water for three days, severely wounded. Mulder locates him, but Sakar is killed, and his body releases toxic fumes. Mulder is captured by the murderer, the Man in Black who killed Berube. Deep Throat offers exchange of Mulder for the original alien tissue, stored at Fort Marlene, Maryland. Scully obtains what appears to be an alien fetus, and exchanges it for Mulder, but Deep Throat is killed during the exchange. His final words are "Trust no one." The term "Purity Control" is first used, on the label of a flask of fluid in Berube's lab, that contains a bacteria. Each Bacteria contains a virus and cloned chloroplasts, constituting alien DNA, because it contains two nucleotides not found among the four in human DNA. "Purity Control" is also the name used at Fort Marlene for the project password, and the storage container for the alien body. The allegiance of the Man in Black is confusing. The Conspiracy would have access to the alien tissue from Fort Marlene. This would suggest that the Man in Black was not a Conspiracy operative. On the other hand, the alien fetus taken by the Man in Black ended up in the hands of the Cigarette Smoking Man, who is part of the Conspiracy. Note: In this episode, Mulder watches channel 8, WDF, apparently a local Washington DC station. May 21, 1994 13 days after Deep Throat is killed, Mulder is informed by Skinner that the X-Files project is being closed, on orders from the top of the executive branch. Scully is assigned as an instructor at the FBI Academy. Mulder is assigned various "garbage" cases. The Cigarette Smoking Man ends up in possession of the alien fetus, which he places in storage in a vault in the Pentagon. (The Erlenmeyer Flask) July 7, 1994 Little Green Men Based on information from Senator Matheson, Mulder goes to Puerto Rico to attempt to obtain data intercepted from space by the Arecibo Observatory, failing to report for FBI duty as a result. The Cigarette Smoking Man directs FBI Assistant Director Skinner to watch Scully, because she will lead them to Mulder. At an abandoned facility associated with the Arecibo radio-telescope, Mulder finds evidence of a signal from space, and believes he has a visitation from an extraterrestrial that looks just like one he saw when his sister was abducted. Scully eludes the agents following her and finds Mulder unconscious at the facility. Scully and Mulder barely avoid a Green Beret UFO recovery team by some heavy-duty off-road driving by Mulder in a Chevy Blazer. Skinner reprimands Mulder, and sends him back to his stakeout duty. A tape containing the signals from space, which Mulder brought back with him, is blank. (Date from airline passenger manifest for Mulder's flight to Puerto Rico, using the name "George Hale," a reference to the famous astronomer. As is so often true, this episode leaves us with the question "what really happened?" The Conspiracy has demonstrated that it can change memories. Did Mulder really see anything? Did he ever really have evidence, or were his memories changed while he was unconscious?) ??? 1994 Alex Krycek is assigned to work with Mulder. Krycek, however, is actually a subordinate of the Cigarette Smoking Man. August 7, 1994 Duane Barry After a lengthy hostage drama, Dana Scully is kidnapped from her apartment by Duane Barry. He believes that if he offers a replacement abductee, he can escape further abductions.(Date given on-screen in the swimming pool scenes.) This represents the second time on-screen that Scully is abducted or held hostage. Ascension Scully is taken captive, kidnapped by aliens or the governmental conspiracy. Skinner reopens the X-Files. Krycek disappears, after sabotaging Mulder's effort on a tramway to save Scully, and killing Duane Barry. Note that Krycek stops the tram to keep Mulder from getting to the summit, notifies his superiors that Mulder has been stopped, and then turns the tram back on, allowing Mulder to get to the summit. Skinner reopens the X-Files. (It is unclear how many days pass during the course of these two episodes. In order for the statement in Emily to fit, that Scully was missing for four weeks, it is hard to explain the dates given in the episodes of August to November.) November 2, 1994 "Emily" is born, according to state records. She is soon adopted by Marshall and Roberta Sim, and named Emily Christine Sim.(Christmas Carol) One Breath Dana Scully appears at a hospital, in a coma. Scully's blood is found to contain protein chains that contain branched DNA that could be a biological marker, but it is inactive. X tells Mulder that he used to be where Mulder is now, an apparent reference to pursuing the conspiracy. Now, of course, he has become an operative of the conspiracy. In a coma, Scully is seen as adrift in a rowboat, until her father speaks to her from beyond the grave. He tells her he loves her and they will soon be together again. Nurse Owens, who is unknown to and unseen by hospital staff, watches over Scully in the intensive care ward. The Cigarette Smoking Man's address is given as 900 W. Georgia Street, and Mulder locates him at home. He tells Mulder he has watched Presidents die, and that Scully was returned because he likes both Scully and Mulder. He is in the game because he believes what he is doing is right. "If people were to know the things that I know, it would all fall apart." (This address is not the address given in Musings as the long-time address of CSM. On the other hand, that may be a blind mail drop and not his actual residence.) Mulder passes up a chance to solve the conspiracy in order to be with the unconscious Scully. Scully wakes up, and Mulder returns her necklace to her. (In Emily, Mulder says Scully was missing for four weeks. This cannot be resolved with Duane Barry being clearly set in August, and other details showing Scully's return to be in November.) 1994???? Red Museum In Delta Glen in eastern Wisconsin, local doctor, Dr. Larson, has been injecting the teenagers and cattle with alien DNA and keeping records of the children by the numbers on credit cards registered to family members. (This is apparently similar to the project Deep Throat mentioned in The Erlenmeyer Flask about school children in a southern state injected with alien DNA in 1987.) The man who killed Deep Throat is in the area, covering their tracks. A local cult of vegetarians called The Church of the Red Museum (which believes they are 18 years away from the New Kingdom) helps Mulder protect the children and may have served as a control group for the experiment. There is a confrontation with the killer in a meat packing plant. He is killed, and he cannot be traced. While not mentioned verbally, many of the children who had received alien DNA look very similar to each other. The FBI leaves the case open and unsolved. (Note that eastern Wisconsin is also where Fallen Angel took place.) Jan 20, 1995 - 04 February 1995 Colony. A research vessel in the Beaufort Sea near the Arctic Circle sees a UFO crash into the water. Investigating, they find a man who they believe to be a Russian pilot, who is also known by fans as the Bounty Hunter. He is transported to a medical facility where he promptly disappears. At an abortion clinic in Scranton, PA, a doctor hears the news report of the Russian pilot and recognizes the man's face. the doctor runs down the hall in fear, but the Bounty Hunter is there and stabs him in the back of the neck with a weapon similar to an ice pick. The blood oozes out green and fizzy. The Bounty Hunter burns the clinic. Mulder has received three obituaries via the Internet for men in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York. All worked in abortion clinics and all looked identical. A fundamentalist minister has been arrested for the arson of the clinic and he is carrying a newspaper ad with a picture of one of the three identical dead men with the headline "do you know this man?" At the newspaper the agents finds that there is a voice mail box associated with the account. It provides tips to other similar looking men. The closest is in Syracuse, NY. While en route, the agents contact Syracuse FBI agent Weiss, who goes to the man's home where he sees the man arguing with the Bounty Hunter. The Bounty Hunter says, "your plan will not succeed." The man is killed and begins dissolving. Weiss fires his gun at the Bounty Hunter. The wounds ooze green fizz and a noxious gas and Weiss is overcome. Later, Mulder and Scully arrive and meet Weiss near the dead man's home. Weiss claims that nobody was home. When Mulder and Scully walk off to investigate the property, we see that the real Weiss is dead in the trunk of Weiss' car and the Bounty Hunter has transformed himself to look like Weiss. Back in Washington, Mulder is called into Skinner's office. Weiss has been found dead. Another e-mail arrives describing one of the identical men, this time living right in the Washington D.C. area. Mulder and Scully are encountered by Ambrose Chapel, who claims to be a CIA agent. He has been the one sending the information to the agents. He claims that early in the cold war the Soviets learned to clone people in a program called Gregor. Several of the Gregor clones arrived in the US in the mid-70s, intended to be moles to sabotage medical services in time of war. In a secret agreement, someone in government is allowing the Gregors to be systematically killed. Chapel claims he placed the "do you know this man" ads in order to find the Gregors and prevent their murder. This latest Gregor sees Mulder, Scully and Chapel arrive at his apartment building. A woman who is with him hides in another room. AS soon as the Gregor seen Chapel at his door, he runs and jumps out a window, falling several stories. Not injured, he gets up and runs again, with the agents returning to the street to chase him. Chapel corners him first in a dark alley and it becomes clear that Chapel is the Bounty Hunter. Mulder is hit by a car and has the wind knocked out of him. When Scully catches up with Chapel, Chapel claims that the Gregor has escaped, however we see green ooze in the dark alley. Back at their office, Mulder and Scully discuss the case. Mulder doesn't believe Chapel. There is no clear cause of death for Weiss, but his blood seems to have thickened. Meanwhile Mulder receives word that his father has been trying to reach him. Calling home, Mulder is surprised that in spite of their divorce, his mother is at his father's home. Fox is asked to come home to Martha's Vineyard. Meanwhile, Scully finds the address where the missing Gregor worked -- a warehouse. Entering it she finds a series of vats filled with yellow-green fluid. She sees Chapel inside the building, destroying the equipment. Scully returns home, believing herself to be in danger, but she cannot reach her partner. Mulder arrives at his father's big home in West Tisbury and is told that his sister has returned. Samantha claims that she was returned at age 9 or 10 and was raised by a family, but had no memory of her real family. She eventually was treated for anxiety and learned of her history during hypnotic regression. It becomes clear that her adopted father was also a Gregor and the bounty Hunter has been sent to kill them. They are all in danger. She explain that the bounty Hunter can morph. Scully leaves word for Mulder that she cannot stay at home and will be at a motel in Germantown, MD. She travels by bus, and unknown to her the Bounty Hunter is on the bus with her. She returns to the Gregor's warehouse and everything has been destroyed. It turns out that there are three Gregors there and she convinces them to go into protective custody, but the Bounty Hunter later uses disguise to enter the jail where they are held. When Scully finally checks into the motel, the clerk forgets to give her a message from Mulder. Later, Mulder arrives at her door and a moment later the phone rings. It is also Mulder on the phone. One is an imposter, the Bounty Hunter. To be continued. End Game. In the Beaufort Sea, 87 miles north of Deadhorse, Alaska, the nuclear submarine USS Allegiance is cruising under the arctic ice when they locate the crashed UFO. Instructions from base order the allegiance to destroy the craft, but before they can fire torpedoes, the sub loses power. the Captain orders the sub to surface, but they are under 32 feet of glacial ice. At the motel, Scully claims the call from Mulder was a wrong number but soon pulls a gun on the Bounty Hunter, who is disguised as Mulder. He attacks her, asking "where is he?" and morphs into his original appearance. When Mulder and Samantha arrive the Bounty Hunter and Scully are gone. Samantha says the Bounty Hunter wants to kill her and that he will call to arrange a trade of Scully for Samantha. At Mulder's apartment, he pressures Samantha for more details. She claims that the Gregors are the progeny of two original visitors -- clones attempting to establish a colony since the 1940s. They believe that our stewardship of the planet is being forsaken and that they will soon become the natural heirs. In the meantime they have been using hybridization of human and alien DNA to eliminate their identical nature. But the experiments were not sanctioned and the Bounty Hunter was dispatched to terminate the colony., all according to Samantha. Skinner comes to the door and Samantha senses that he is not the Bounty Hunter. Scully calls -- she is being held by the Bounty Hunter who wants to exchange her for the woman in Mulder's company in one hour. Skinner agrees to help and arranges a sniper near the bridge where Mulder and Samantha meet the Bounty Hunter. The exchange is made. Samantha attempts to stab the Bounty Hunter in the back of the neck but he disarms her. "Tell me where she is," he demands of Samantha. The sniper fires at the Bounty Hunter but does not kill him. He and Samantha fall into the river. The next morning, divers are searching the river near the bridge. Mulder is convinced that the woman really was Samantha and goes off to tell his father. Bill Mulder visits his son's apartment and Fox confesses that he has lost Samantha again. "Do you know what losing her again is going to do to your mother?" asks Bill, not at all sensitive to his son's anguish. Bill leaves an envelope that Samantha left for Fox. Inside is the address of a Rockville, MD, abortion clinic and a note saying that if they are separated he should meet her there. As he walks up to the clinic, Scully calls his cell phone and says that Samantha's body has been found. After the phone call ends, Scully sees the body fizz green and collapse. Mulder enters the clinic which at first seems to be abandoned. but in the basement he finds a woman who looks just like Samantha working at a tank of yellow-green fluid. "She's dead, isn't she?" the woman asks. She is obviously a clone, and Mulder soon meets three others. They say that protecting "the one from which we all came," is the important thing, although it is not clear if this is one of them. Mulder chooses to not believe them and walk out, even though one claims to know where the real Samantha is. The bounty Hunter arrives and knocks Mulder unconscious. Firemen evacuate Mulder from the clinic. There are no other people in the building. He is eventually treated and released from a hospital. Scully prepares her report -- it must remain incomplete. Weiss' body was apparently subjected to a retrovirus that caused his blood to thicken by producing massive amounts of red blood cells. Scully learns that this is apparently an immune system response to the virus, which can be controlled by reducing the temperature five degrees. Meanwhile, Mulder meets his source "X" who describes the submarine being disabled by the Bounty Hunter's craft. An attack fleet was dispatched from Anchorage that morning to make sure the pilot doesn't leave. Scully goes to Mulder's apartment and finds him gone. He left e-mail for him saying that he will not let her jeopardize her life and her career by following him. She asks Skinner for help -- even unofficial channels, but he tells her he cannot help. She places the "X" of masking tape on Mulder's window to summon "X" who arrives, but leaves as soon as he sees that Mulder is not there. Skinner accosts X in the elevator and they fight. Skinner appears at Mulder's door and tells Scully that Mulder took a commercial flight to Tacoma, WA, then a military flight to Deadhorse, Alaska. He used his FBI credentials to charter a rolligon. As Mulder nears the coordinates apparently given top him by X, he finds the conning tower of a submarine sticking through the ice. He boards the ship and finds only one man alive, hiding. He says he is a lieutenant and that the Bounty Hunter killed all the others on the ship. Mulder realizes that he is the Bounty Hunter and holds his gun to the base of the man's neck. As he uses handcuffs to connect the two of them together, the Bounty Hunter bolts and attacks Mulder, who keeps pleading "tell me how to find my sister." "She's alive -- can you die now?" the Bounty Hunter asks. Mulder shoots the Bounty Hunter and is distressed by the noxious gas that emerges from the wounds. The Bounty Hunter shoves Mulder out a hatch, which snaps the chain of the handcuff when the hatch slams shut on the chain. Mulder barely escapes as the submarine sinks into the sea. In scenes seen both at the beginning of Colony and at the end of End Game, Mulder is found by a Navy recon team and brought to a hospital facility by helicopter. His heart is stopped and he has hypothermia, so the doctors place him in a vat of warm water to raise his body temperature. Scully bursts into the emergency room and demands that they remove him from the water bath. She says he has been exposed to a retrovirus and the only think keeping him alive is his reduced body temperature. Mulder is removed from the water and his heart started by electric shock. Intensive transfusions and antiviral drugs pull him through. He wakes up to find Scully at his bedside. "Did you find what you were looking for?" she asks. "No," he answers. "But I found something I thought I'd lost -- faith to keep looking." Note: Mulder's Global Positioning System receiver indicated February 3, 1995. After the opening scene, previewing the final scenes of End Game, the text indicated that Colony began two weeks earlier. April 9, 1995 Anasasi. A computer hacker breaks into the "MJ Documents," triggering an effort of an international commando "black" organization to recover the materials. Lone Gunmen call the group "Garnet." Mulder obtains the tape, but it turns out to be written in Navaho. Scully's name is found in the MJ Documents, as well as references to Merchandise and vaccination.     The Cigarette Smoking Man pays a call on Bill Mulder. They clearly had an agreement that Smoking Man would never visit or seek him out, but the Smoking Man says that was a long time ago and this business is pressing. He explains that Bill Mulder's name may be found in the MJ documents, and encourages him to "Deny Everything." Bill complains that the files should have been destroyed. The Cigarette Smoking Man says he is protecting Fox Mulder, to a certain extent. William Mulder calls his son to Martha's Vineyard to tell him tells Fox that the choices that had to be made seemed complicated in the past are clear now, but he regrets them now. He encourages his son to not give in, and tells him he will learn the meaning of the important words "the Merchandise," then is killed by Alex Krycek. His final words ask forgiveness from his son, although for exactly what remain unclear. [In this episode, Fox seems shocked that his father might have been part of the conspiracy Fox is chasing, even though in 1989 former FBI agent Arthur Dale told Fox that Bill Mulder was involved. Does this mean Mulder did not believe Dale? (Travelers)] Fox is drugged with a psychoactive agent in his apartment water system. He assaults Skinner and ignores a disciplinary hearing. Scully is forced to shoot him to keep him from killing Alex Krycek. She drugs him and takes him to Farmington, New Mexico. He wakes up on April 16. Albert Hohsteen and his family take him to a buried boxcar where there are dozens of misformed human bodies. The translated MJ documents say the bodies are the result of experimentation by Axis scientists in the US after World War II. The experiment subjects are referred to as The Merchandise. In spite of the alien appearance of the bodies, they have smallpox vaccination scars. We later learn they were killed with Hydrogen Cyanide. (Anasasi) The Blessing Way. Mulder escapes death in a buried boxcar, when the altered human bodies in the car are burned by subordinates of the Smoking Man. The Navaho help him heal and while in a coma, Deep Throat and William Mulder talk to him. The spirit of Deep Throat encourages him to return to the living. The spirit of Bill Mulder tells him he brokered fate with his children, a reference to Samantha's disappearance. He said the lies he told his son were a poison on his soul and a truth he could not live with. He regrets the decisions he made so long ago. The Well Manicured Man approaches Scully and warns her that she may be killed, possibly by an acquaintance. This causes her to distrust Skinner. She and Skinner pull guns on each other in Mulder's apartment, short circuited by Mulder's arrival back home. Paper Clip. Melissa Scully dies from gunshot wounds, shot in Scully's apartment when she is mistaken for her sister. Krycek obtains the digital tape with the MJ files, and disappears. June? 1995 Krycek sells information from the MJ documents about a UFO that crashed in the Pacific Ocean during W.W.II to the French government. French agents plan to recover the nuclear weapon.(Nisei) Early August 1995 Fearing publicity, the Cigarette Smoking Man has the triangular-shaped UFO that crashed in the Pacific Ocean during W.W.II salvaged. A tramp steamer/salvage vessel registered in San Diego, the Talapus, is used to recover the UFO, allegedly looking for a sunken Japanese W.W.II submarine with gold on board. Note: The name Talapus may be taken from Mount Talapus, near Portland, Oregon. A Japanese medical team, conducting an autopsy of a body found on board the UFO is murdered by a military special forces team. An Allentown, PA, member of the Mutual UFO Network, Steven Zinter, intercepts an alien autopsy video feel on a satellite circuit, and sells it by mail order. (Nisei and 731) October 1995 Nisei. Seven weeks after he intercepts the video feed, Steven Zinter is killed by a Japanese diplomat who carries a briefcase with satellite photos of the Talapus. Senator Matheson helps Mulder locate the warehouse where the UFO is stored, and he sees what he believes to be an alien loaded onto a railroad quarantine car. Mulder boards the train. Scully meets several other women who claim to be abductees, and has a flashback in which she sees herself on an operating table, pregnant. October 1995 731. In Perkey, WV, a military team executes dozens of malformed humans from Dr. Zama's closed hospital. Scully finds evidence that the chip implanted in her neck was recording thoughts, for later playback. The manufacturer is Japanese, connected by paperwork Dr. Shiro Zama's hospital in WV. Scully talks with a member of the Conspiracy, the Elder, also known to fans as the Fat Man, who tells her Zama kept his experimentation secret from his American patrons. A man who claims to be an NSA operative kills Dr. Shiro Zama, under orders from the Conspiracy, but is himself killed by X. Scully concludes that she was tested in a similar rail car during her 1994 abduction, and that Zama tested subjects with diseases and radiation tests. Mulder suspects that Zama was working to develop a alien/human hybrid intended as a weapon, to be immune to biological weapons. The rail car explodes and the bodies at Zama's hospital are removed, leaving no traces. The Cigarette Smoking Man obtains Zama's records. (Scully notes that two weeks earlier, the President apologized for secret radiation testing conducted on civilians up to 1974. The President's commission was appointed in January 1994 and presented its report in October 95.) October 1995 Piper Maru. An alien life form, waiting in a sunken P-51 Mustang takes control of a French salvage crew diver from the ship Piper Maru at the location where a Foo Fighter crashed in 1945 and where the Talapus salvaged a UFO earlier in the year. The entire crew suffers from extreme radiation poisoning, except for the infected diver, Gautier. The entity occupies other people, including Krycek. FBI Assistant Director Skinner, is shot and wounded by an agent of the Cigarette Smoking Man -- shown by evidence to be the same man who shot Melissa Scully, Argentine citizen Louis Cardinale. (Date based on Skinner saying it has been five months since Melissa was shot, which would really be September, but this episode has to follow Nisei and 731.) Scully meets several women who claim to be abduction victims. Some are suffering from strange forms of cancer that does not respond to treatment. Some claim to recognize Scully from the "bright white place." November 1995 Apocrypha. The Cigarette Smoking Man takes Krycek into custody, while he is occupied by the alien entity. The entity is allowed to return to its UFO, placed for safe storage in an abandoned in missile silo 1013, at Black Crow, North Dakota, unlike other UFOs stored in Nevada. Krycek is left alive but sealed in the silo. Skinner returns to work, limping from his gunshot wound. Cardinale is found dead in his cell, made to look like suicide. The Conspiracy meets on 46th Street, New York, preserving the secrecy and future of its project. ??? 1995 War of the Coprophages. Computerized mechanical insects are discovered in Miller's Grove Massachusetts (not to be confused with Grover's Mill in "The War of the Worlds") that could be alien probes. Dr. Bambi Barenbaum expresses the opinion that UFOs are actually glowing nocturnal insect swarms. December 1995 Krycek either escapes from the North Dakota missile silo, or is found by anti-government militia members, lead by Timothy Edward Mayhew. Krycek works with them to build two bombs. He plans to use one to decoy Mulder into a complex scheme. (Tunguska) ??? 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. 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. Tina Mulder has a stroke after talking with her old acquaintance the Cigarette Smoking 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 the Cigarette Smoking 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. The Cigarette Smoking 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. 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 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. The Cigarette Smoking 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 the Cigarette Smoking 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 the Cigarette Smoking Man to find the killer of his lover, Dr. Charre-Sayre. The Smoking 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. The Cigarette Smoking 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. The Cigarette Smoking 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) January ?, 1997 Memento Mori. Tests at Holy Cross Memorial Medical Center confirm that Dana Scully has a tumor on the wall of her nasal cavity, near the brain. The condition is hard to treat and if it should grow into the brain it would be fatal. It is the same as that faced by eleven women Scully met in 731. Scully and Mulder visit Betsy Hagopian's home and learn she died 2 1/2 weeks earlier. They discover someone downloading her computer files, and track it to Kurt Crawford. He says he is also a MUFON member and is concerned that a governmental conspiracy wants to cover up the information in the files. Scully visits Penny Northern in Allentown-Bethlehem Medical Center. Dr. Kevin Scanlon treats Penny and says she might have had a better chance if the cancer had been caught earlier. Scully decides to begin treatment to try to find "the truth" inside her, with chemotherapy treatments to weaken her immune system so a gene therapy can be tried. Meanwhile Mulder and Crawford find references to several dead women being treated at the federally operated Center for Reproductive Medicine in Lehigh Furnace, Pennsylvania. When Mulder leaves to take Scully her things at the hospital, Crawford is killed by a man wielding an "alien killer" ice pick. Crawford's blood fizzes green, revealing him to have alien DNA. Mulder sneaks into the Center for Reproductive Medicine and finds another Crawford clone (although Mulder doesn't realize this) and they hack their way into the computer system, where reference is found to Scully in a directory about the Lumbard Research Facility, although she has not been a patient. Mulder asks Skinner to set up a meeting with the Cigarette Smoking Man, but Skinner warns him against giving in. Mulder agrees, and turns to the Lone Gunmen, who hack into the Lumbard computer and data on the branched DNA found in Scully's system in One Breath. They physically break into Lumbard, and Mulder finds several Crawford clones, revealing them to be clones of the blond boy seen with the child Samantha clone in Herrenvolk. Mulder is told that the clones are working to subvert The Project that produced them. He is shown stored ova removed from abduction victims, including Scully, Penny Northern and Betsy Hagopian. He keeps one of Scully's. The clones tell him that the abducted women who are dying are their mothers, providing half the raw material for the hybrids. The operative who killed the first Crawford almost kills Mulder, except for some bullet-proof glass. Penny dies, after telling Scully that she must not give up hope. Scully decides to return to work in hopes that finding "the truth" will help her find a cure for her cancer. Although Skinner warned Mulder not to approach the Cigarette Smoking Man about Scully, Skinner does himself and begins to negotiate what it would take to save Scully's life. The Smoking Man tells him that there is always another way, "if you are willing to pay the price." (It has been reported in the media that Chris Carter had a contact at the FBI with whom he checked various details to improve accuracy. This contact's name is reported to be Kurt Crawford -- apparently where the name for the character in this episode originated.) February 23, 1997 Tempus Fugit. Mulder takes Scully out to celebrate her 33rd birthday. Meanwhile, at about 8pm, Flight 549, carrying Max Fenig, crashes near Northville, New York, after an apparent encounter with a UFO. Conspiracy forces mobilize to keep the truth secret. Max's sister, Sharon Graffia, a private pilot, approaches Mulder and Scully during their birthday party and informs them of the crash. Mulder suspects that Max was kidnapped directly from the jetliner, although NTSB investigators appear to find Max's body. Later evidence suggests that two UFOs were near Flight 549. Sharon is abducted, and returned to the crash site by a triangular UFO. Mulder and Scully make contact with Sergeant Louis Frish, the air traffic controller in contact with Flight 549. Frish asks for protection, and Scully takes him to Washington, then, oddly, takes him to a public bar, where a Conspiracy operative attempts to kill one or both of them. Scully kills the operative, but Pendrell is shot, taking a bullet for Scully. Meanwhile, Mulder locates a crashed UFO in a lake. Scuba diving to it, he finds an apparent gray alien at the controls, but is approached by two lights underwater.(Note: This episode covers four days, beginning on the evening of February 23 and concluding somewhat after midnight on the morning of February 26.) February 26, 1997 MAX. Two divers assault Mulder underwater, he escapes, but is arrested on land by a military unit. The operative who shot Pendrell escapes but Pendrell dies from his punctured lung. Scully bails Mulder out, revealing that Sharon is not Max's sister, but was once a co-worker at a defense industry company. The Air Force claims Frish erred, and caused an F-15 to hit Flight 549. Mulder and Scully visit Max's Airstream trailer, and find a video tape he made. (Max also had the Sounds From the Key of X CD in his stereo.) The military unit recovers hardware and bodies from the sunken saucer, and the operative (now back in the Albany area after having escaped from Scully in Washington and not limping from his leg wound) states that they have found what they were looking for. Sharon tells Scully that she stole a piece of alien hardware from her employer. Max had one part, which is why the UFO followed Flight 549. She had another piece, which is why she was abducted. Mulder finds the third in an airport baggage claim office, and takes it on a commercial flight to Washington, much like the events that happened to Max a few days earlier. The operative is also on board the flight. A UFO intercepts the flight and recovers the final piece of alien hardware. It is unclear whether this UFO is human-operated or alien-operated, but the implication is that it is alien-operated, since the Air Force tried to shoot down the UFO that tried to abduct Max. Mulder is left with no evidence. April 12, 1997 Demons. Mulder receives treatment with a psychoactive drug as part of his efforts to remember the circumstances involving his sister's disappearance. He experiences a series of flashbacks to events in his family's summer cottage in Rhode Island during which his parents argue and the Cigarette Smoking Man is present -- at one point calling young Fox a spy. Closed captioning reveals Mrs. Mulder repeatedly says "not Samantha," and Bill Mulder says that the orders came down from on high. Bill Mulder and the Smoking Man also argue during the flashbacks, which may or may not be true, due to the drugs Mulder has received. Mulder awakes in a motel, unable to explain how he got there, and with the blood of two murdered people on his shirt. Murder charges against Mulder are eventually dismissed when it is discovered that the victims were abductees, also receiving the psychoactive drug, who participated in a murder-suicide. Mulder confronts his mother about the events in the summer house he has seen in flashbacks. He accuses her of betraying his father, but then accuses her of having an affair with the Cigarette Smoking Man, and asks who his father really is. She rebukes him, and says she will not stand for such questions, asking Fox if he wants to kill his father all over again. (This episode contains a significant inconsistency in dates. Act one is clearly labeled as happening on April 12. April 12, 1997, was a Saturday, however Scully tells Mulder that April 12 is a Sunday. Other episodes this season have clearly included the 1997 date, leaving the inconsistency impossible to resolve.) April 27 1997 Zero Sum. Jane Brody, a worker at a parcel shipping company, is killed by bee stings. Based on the agreement worked out in Momento Mori, the Cigarette Smoking Man directs Skinner to clean up the scene of Brody's death and remove all evidence. Skinner is forced to impersonate Mulder, and a Conspiracy operative kills a police officer who could identify Skinner, using Skinner's gun. Scully enters the hospital for tests on her cancer. The Conspiracy begins a test of the smallpox-carrying bees, in a school yard in South Carolina, leading to further deaths. Skinner learns about Mulder's contact in the United Nations, Marita Covarrubius, and contacts her, explaining that he has located some of the bees. She encourages him to inform authorities of what he knows -- something he cannot do without implicating himself in obstruction of justice. Mulder discovers from photo evidence that Skinner posed as Mulder, and confronts him. He eventually comes to believe Skinner's story, and covers up for him when it is confirmed that Skinner's gun killed the police detective. Marita is revealed to be an associate of the Cigarette Smoking Man, although their relationship is unclear, as are her motivations for feeding information to Mulder. (Date taken from evidence log.) October 1997 Gethsemane. Dana Scully reports to a committee comprised of Section Chief Blevins (who first assigned her to the X-Files) and several other men and women who are not identified in the episode. She says she is there to report on the illegitimacy of Mulder's work over the years, and that Mulder has been the subject of a complex hoax dealing with alleged alien life and the abduction of his sister. She reports that Mulder claimed to have located the frozen body of an extra-terrestrial, but that two scientists studying the body in a warehouse/lab in southeast Washington DC were killed and the body stolen. One is named Arlinsky, the forensic anthropologist who Mulder has been in contact with over the last four years. Scully reports that she was also told that several members of a Canadian geodetic survey team were killed in the cave in the St. Elias Mountains in the Yukon Territory, where the alleged alien body was located, in an apparent earlier attempt to take the body. She claims to have learned about a complex "mechanism of deception" that was designed to mislead Mulder, resulting in what she calls the "illegitimacy" of Mulder's work. In fact, at least one of the people in the Yukon, an associate of Arlinsky's, is shown to be an operative of the Conspiracy. Scully also describes locating Michael Kritschgau, assigned to the Pentagon Research Division in Virginia, who she says she found stealing an ice core sample. She further relates how Kritschgau describes the complicated conspiracy to mislead Mulder to deflect scrutiny from the continued misdeeds of the military-industrial complex by convincing Mulder to go public with claims of alien life, and that Kritschgau further claims the same people engineered Scully's cancer. Kritschgau claims that his son is very ill as the result of Conspiracy chemical warfare experiments during the Gulf War. Scully also tells the committee that her cancer has moved into her blood stream, which she had said in Momento Mori would almost certainly be fatal to her. She reports that Mulder was found dead in his apartment of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. (As always when The X-Files uses flashbacks, it is difficult to determine what actually happened, and what is based on imperfect memories and/or Scully's fabrication as part of her lie.) October 1997 Redux. Mulder is not dead. In fact, Scully is cooperating with him to entrap the Conspiracy source in the FBI. The dead man is Scott Ostelhoff, Conspiracy operative who has been videotaping in Mulder's apartment through a tiny hole in the ceiling. 24 hours before the FBI joint committee seen in Gethsemane, Mulder kills Ostelhoff in self defense, then uses his DOD security clearance card to infiltrate the Pentagon. Mulder finds dozens of apparent alien bodies (or are they hoaxes?), sees several apparent abductees undergoing medical tests and irradiation, and finds the secret basement storage room where Conspiracy evidence is kept. He finds a storage box containing materials relating to Scully, and takes a vial of fluid, in hopes it contains a cure for her cancer. He also finds a file card with Scully's name on it, plus many serial or code numbers. He finds a card for Michael Kritschgau, Jr., but there are no serial numbers on the card. Mulder escapes the Pentagon at the last second, through the intervention of the Cigarette Smoking Man. The Smoking Man has earlier in the day visited Mulder's empty apartment, with a look of remorse on his face. He discovers that the apartment has been subject to video observation, without his knowledge. He complains to the Elder (also known as the Fat Man) Conspiracy that the information should not have been kept from him, because he has been keeping Mulder in check, and in fact "created" Mulder. The Elder denies knowledge of such observation. Scully, meanwhile, spends the day at the Paleoarcheology lab at American University, where cells found in the Yukon ice have begun growing into an organism. She discovers that DNA fragments in a virus in the organism are also in her body. This proves conclusively to her that whoever gave her cancer is also responsible for what she sees as the body hoax. After providing false information to the FBI joint committee, she reveals the DNA evidence, and makes the accusation that someone in the committee room is responsible for both the hoax and her cancer. Her suspicion centers on Skinner. Her nose begins bleeding, and she collapses. Skinner leaps across the room to catch her, and calls for a doctor. Mulder takes the vial of fluid to the Lone Gunmen, who extract some of the contents to analyze the fluid inside. Spectography reveals it is "de-ionized water," meaning it is not a cure. October 1997 Redux II. Mulder rushes to Trinity Hospital Medical Center, where Scully is a patient, and meets Skinner in the hallway. Skinner says he has been withholding forensic evidence and Mulder believes he is not responsible for Scully's cancer. The Cigarette Smoking Man tells Mulder that the de-ionized water contains a computer chip designed to inhibit the cancer, and the Lone Gunmen find it in the vial. Dana decides to have the chip implanted, but also finally returns to her faith. The family priest comes to her hospital room and they pray. The Elder watches a Congressional hearing on TV, about human cloning. He orders an assassination. The Cigarette Smoking Man brings Samantha to meet Mulder, at night in a diner. She says she remembers little about her abduction, and has been told that her family was dead. She considers the Smoking Man to be her father and has been told that he and Mrs. Mulder had an affair but kept it secret. She is confused and afraid, and leaves without giving Mulder a means of contact, but promises to consider whether to have further contact. The Cigarette Smoking Man tells Mulder that Kritschgau did not tell him the entire truth. He offers Mulder the complete truth, if Mulder leaves the FBI and goes to work for the Smoking Man. Mulder is greatly tempted, but ends up declining. Mulder testifies to the FBI committee and names Blevins as the FBI mole responsible for Scully's cancer. Later, in private, another member of the FBI committee kills Blevins and makes it look like suicide. The Cigarette Smoking Man is shot through a window, but Skinner tells Mulder that no body was found and they assume he is dead because so much blood was lost. Dana's cancer goes into remission, but it is unknown whether this is the result of the chip or prayer or what. A Biotechnology firm called Roush is implicated with both Kritschgau and Blevins. Skinner is seen in the Congressional committee room, listening to the testimony about human cloning and investigating Roush. Mulder ends the episode crying in the hallway outside Scully's hospital room, happy that she is in remission, but frustrated that he is still without answers. (Note: The federal personnel computer screen seen in Gethsemane contains an apparent April date for these events. In Redux, the phone records show October dates. This Timeline assumes that the April date was something other than a current date.) December 21, 1997 Christmas Carol. Dana Scully and her mother travel to the San Diego US Naval Air Station to visit Bill Scully Jr., and his wife, Tara, who is pregnant. Dana answers a phone call and believes she hears her dead sister's voice saying "she needs your help." The call is traced to the Sims residence, where Roberta Sims has committed suicide. The Sims have a 4 year old daughter, Emily, who Dana learns was adopted. Emily looks almost exactly like Melissa Scully at age 4. Dana reveals to her mother that because of her abduction some years earlier, Dana cannot have children -- something that is bothering her more and more. Dana suspects murder in the Sims case, and an autopsy shows high levels of a pain-killing drug in Roberta's system, injected via hypodermic. In a search of the Sims residence, a needle is found. Dana sees two mysterious men outside, watching. Tests show a 60% chance that Emily is Melissa's daughter. Dana orders more extensive tests. She learns that the Sims have been getting large cash payments from Transgen Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Calderon there tells her that Emily has a rare medical condition they have been treating experimentally. That doctor prescribed the drug found in Mrs. Sims blood to Mr. Sims, who claimed to have severe headaches. Mr. Sims is arrested for murder, and Emily is taken into custody by Social Services. In the San Diego County Jail, Mr. Sims is found dead of an apparent suicide just after the same two mysterious men, who claimed to be his lawyers, leave his cell. Dana petitions for custody of Emily, but Social Services discourages her because of her job and lifestyle. On Christmas morning, a courier arrives with the results of the more sophisticated DNA tests on Emily. She is not Melissa's daughter, but is the daughter of Dana Scully. December 31, 1997 Emily. Mulder arrives in San Diego to help Scully. Emily's birth mother is given in secret records as "Anna Fugazzi," but there is no trace of a real person by that name. Mulder testifies for Scully before an adoption judge. Emily is found in the children's home to have a very high fever and a green cyst on her neck. When a biopsy is done, green ooze and gas comes out. Dr. Calderon declines to deliver her medical records. Mulder visits him, roughs him up, then follows him to a large house. Two Dark Suited Men there kill Calderon, whose wound bleeds green ooze. They then morph into Calderon's appearance and leave. One goes to the hospital and injects Emily with something green. Mulder eventually returns to the house, and finds it is a nursing home and finds 71 year old Anna Fugazzi, and several other elderly women, who has each had a baby in recent years. Dr. Calderon has been treating them with a "Beauty Sleep." Mulder finds a human fetus in green liquid, with Dana Scully's name on the documentation. Kresge meets Mulder at the house, and they are both attacked by a Dark Suited Man, who escapes after injuring Kresge. Mulder leaves with a vial of the green fluid. Emily is very ill, with a growth in her body. She dies. The Scully family attends a funeral service a few days later. After the service, Dana opens the casket to recover her necklace, that she had given Emily to wear. The body is gone, and filled with sand to give it the appropriate weight. The necklace is in the sand. The nursing home has been emptied with the women placed in other homes around the state. Kresge recovers. Nobody at Transgen knows anything about Dr. Calderon's work. (Several days apparently pass during this episode. It has been suggested that for Tara to be walking after the birth of her son, that a week or two must have passed between the final scene of Emily in the hospital and her funeral.) February 1998???? Patient X. In Kazakhstan, a boy, Dmitri, witnesses a scene in which a light from the sky descends and several people are burned to death. Soon after, a UN team led by Marita Covarrubias and a Russian team led by Alex Krycek confront each other. Krycek has Dmitri and takes him to a prison where he is infected with Black Cancer. Krycek, however, makes off with Dmitri and takes him by ship to New York. Fox Mulder is on an MIT visiting lecturer's panel discussing the case of "Patient X," Cassandra Spender, who says she has been taken by aliens several times. Mulder does not believe, saying instead that it is a government conspiracy. Dr. Heitz Werber tells Mulder that he is treating Cassandra, and Mulder meets her in person. She says the different alien races are warring and she expects to be called. They are here to deliver a message, but something has gone wrong. Cassandra is confined to a wheelchair. At FBI Headquarters, Special Agent Jeffrey Spender talks with Scully. Cassandra is his mother and she is emotionally disturbed, he says. He asks that the X-File agents not talk with Cassandra. Mulder and Scully then discuss Cassandra. She was abducted from Skyland Mountain, Virginia, where Scully was taken. At Skyland Mountain, several cars carrying abductees are waiting. The Bounty Hunter approaches carrying a wand and sets people on fire. The Bounty Hunter's face appears to have the eyes, nose and mouth sealed shut. Marita reports to the Consortium about Kazakhstan. There were 41 bodies, all burned by an intense biochemical reaction. The Elders say there is no clear information on the weapon used. We are still 15 years away from when "it begins." While they meet, Krycek telephones. He knows the Consortium is working on a vaccine for the black oil. He wants to trade Dmitri. Later, the Consortium learns about the Skyland Mountain incident. Someone is going to great lengths to undermine their work. "We have to stop it before the Colonists intervene." On the ship, Krycek and Marita meet. They kiss passionately and go off to be alone. After Marita has left, Krycek discovers that Dmitri has been taken. Cassandra recognizes the names of many of the Skyland Mountain victims. She was in a UFO cult with them 20 years ago. Scully is feeling called. Mulder learns that several of the dead had implants and were being treated for emotional problems. Marita calls Mulder to tell him about Kazakhstan. While she is talking to Mulder from a payphone, Dmitri approaches with oil leaking from his eyes. Mulder learns that Scully and Cassandra are both missing. They are on a bridge -- Ruskin Dam in Pennsylvania -- with a large group of people, waiting. Dmitri is there, too. There are lights in the sky. One of the people bursts into flames and we see two men in black approach, carrying the wands that set people on fire. They seem to be faceless -- their eyes, nose and mouth seem covered by skin. Note: The MIT panel in this episode is probably the UFO convention referenced in The Pine Bluff Variant. At some point following the UFO convention, Mulder is approached by Jacob Steven Haley, a domestic terrorist. Haley is on a crusade against the American government. Because of Mulder's accusations about a conspiracy in the government, Haley believes Mulder may support the effort. Mulder, however, reports the contact immediately and begins a deep undercover assignment to capture Haley and his band of terrorists. Scully is not told. Mulder soon learns that August Bremer is the mastermind of the group, and is vying with Haley for actual leadership. (Pine Bluff Variant) March 1998???? The Red and the Black. The camera sees a close-up of a letter being typed on a typewriter. "Dear son, I hope this finds you well..." The letter talks of reconciliation, and tells a legend of twin war gods coming together to get magic and weapons from their father to eliminate the monsters of the world. The letter voices hopes for a reconciliation between father and son. A boy trudges through a snowy Canadian forest to the door of a cabin. An arm hands a red envelope to the boy, who sees that it is addressed to someone at the FBI. At Ruskin Dam in Pennsylvania, rescue crews arrive and find many burned bodies. Mulder also arrives and learns that Scully is one of fifty survivors. Cassandra Spender is missing. Scully is taken by helicopter ambulance and ends up at Memorial Hospital in Washington DC. She wakes up but has no memory of what happened or how she got to Pennsylvania. Many of the burned bodies had implants, possibly used to call the people to the dam. Mulder believes that the government made the chips. He does not trust his memory of his sister's abduction. Mulder suggests that Scully undergo hypnotic regression to remember what happened at the dam. Cohorts of the Well Manicured Man have found Marita alongside the road. She is infected with the Black Oil and is unconscious. The Well Manicured Man is also holding Krycek captive in the Russian ship and realizes that Krycek has a vaccine making resistance to the "alien colonists" possible. Meanwhile, at Weikamp AFB, a UFO crashes. One occupant of the craft is dead, the other is one of the faceless men who were at the dam. Security Police take him into custody. Dr. Heitz Werber hypnotizes Scully. She remembers seeing a UFO overhead. It disappears and the faceless men appear, setting people on fire. Another UFO arrives and attacks the faceless men. Cassandra Spender is levitated into the ship and it leaves. Scully awakes, shocked by her memories. Later, Jeffrey Spender visits the X-Files office and talks with Scully. He plays a tape of himself as an eleven year child, telling a story about his mother's abduction, but says it was false, induced by having her tell so often what she said happened and because Spender's father left his family. Marita has been given the vaccine Krycek provided, but she has not awakened. The Elder orders the surviving faceless man to be turned over to the colonists, saying "survival means cooperation." The consortium thought they were fifteen years away from the colonization, or whatever they are working toward, but it seems to be beginning now. The Well Manicured Man argues that an alliance might be possible with the rebel faction of the colonists but the Elder will hear nothing of it. The Bounty Hunter, (first seen in the episode Colony) enters the Air Force Base by climbing over the chain link fence topped by razor wire. Mulder comes home to find Krycek in his apartment. Krycek says there is a war and five billion people could die as the result of the planned colonization of Earth by an alien race. Krycek says "I was sent by a man who knows that resistance is in our grasp." He says the sites of the deaths are "lighthouses" where the invasion will begin. The burnings were done by a resistance. Mulder does not believe but Krycek gives him the name of Weikamp AFB. Mulder and Scully go there and find the base uncustomarily closed. As they are at the gate a truck leaves, driven by a man Scully recognizes from the dam -- a man viewers know to be an operative of the consortium and the man who shot the Cigarette Smoking Man. Mulder jumps on the back of the truck and climbs into the canvas-covered bed. Inside he finds a cell containing the surviving faceless man. The driver morphs and becomes the Bounty Hunter. He stops the truck, possibly because the Air Force Base gate has notified him by radio that Mulder has boarded the truck. The Bounty Hunter enters the back, looking for Mulder, and pulls out an "ice pick" device, which can be used to immobilize Bounty Hunters. A UFO appears over the truck and a faceless man enters, carrying a burning wand. Mulder shoots his gun, then experiences lost time. He wakes up surrounded by security police, unable to remember what happened. The Bounty Hunter and the faceless man are gone. There is no news about Cassandra. We see that Marita's eyes are clear of the Black Oil indicating that the vaccine has worked. Skinner tells Jeffrey Spender that he has a powerful patron outside the office. Spender receives a letter mailed from Canada. Then we return to the Canadian forest and see a boy walking up to the cabin in the snow. He gives a letter to the occupant, who is the Cigarette Smoking Man, and we see that the letter he wrote to somebody in the FBI has been returned, unopened. Notes: (1) The return address given on the letter at the opening and close of this episode is Rural Route #1. North Hatley, Quebec. The letter received by spender is addressed to Mr. Jeffrey Spender, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 935 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC. Pennsylvania Avenue and Washington DC are visible on the envelope returned to CSM but the addressee's name is covered by the Return to Sender No Forwarding Service Available label. (2) One of the faceless men seen in Patient X certainly looks like Brian Thompson, who plays the Bounty Hunter. The episode makes it evident, however, that the character the Bounty Hunter was not one of the faceless men. (3) The episode name was taken from a novel that was famous for exploration the psyche of its characters. The actual name is a reference to roulette. May 1998 The End. In a packet stadium in Vancouver, a Russian man and an American boy play chess. Overhead, an assassin sets up his weapon. The boy seems to hear unintelligible noises. Just as the boy declares "checkmate," the man is shot and killed. Meanwhile, in the Lautentian Mountains of Canada, two paratroopers land on snow and approach the cabin where the Cigarette Smoking Man is living. One is shot while trying to enter the cabin. The other sees footprints in the snow showing that CSM is running. He follows, getting the drop on him. The commando is Alex Krycek and he was sent to bring CSM back for the Consortium. They have a job for CSM, which he accepts. Skinner tells Mulder that Agent Spender has been assigned to handle the chess match killing and he does not want Mulder involved. Mulder goes into the briefing anyway and quickly points out on the tape that the boy, named Gibson, pulled back just as the shot was fired, as if he knew about the assassin. Also in the briefing is Scully and Agent Diana Fowley. She supports Mulder. She has been with the Bureau since 1991 and has been working at the embassy in Berlin, but she had some things in the US she wanted to get back to. Mulder, Scully and Fowley interview Gibson in a psych hospital in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Mulder thinks he can read minds. He tells Mulder, "You're thinking about one of the girls you brought." Scully doesn't believe he is a mind reader, and even if he was, who would want to kill him? Diana suggests, maybe someone whose business is keeping secrets. Mulder interviews the shooter, who is in custody, over Spender's objection. The shooter is a former intelligence agent, and the gun is registered to an intelligence agency. Mulder offers immunity. Later, the shooter is slipped a note written on an opened pack of Morleys saying "you're a dead man." Meanwhile, Gibson is undergoing tests for mind reading, and is proving 100% accurate. Scully takes the test results to the Lone Gunmen for analysis "with an eye to the parapsychological." They tell her that Diana was Mulder's "chicky" when she just got out of the academy, around 1991. She was there when he discovered the X-Files. The Gunmen always wondered why they split up. Mulder and Diana talk. She says Gibson is the real thing. Too bad Mulder doesn't have a partner who is more supportive -- Scully doesn't seem to have a very open mind. Scully sees them talking and holding hands, and is upset. Rather than walking up to them in person she goes to her car and calls on the cell phone. She has important news about Gibson. As she drives off, Agent Spender arrives and is accosted in the parking garage by CSM. Spender is bewildered and has no idea who CSM is. Mulder sees them and becomes suspicious of Spender. With everyone gathered together in Skinner's office, Scully explains -- Gibson has an unusual level of development in one brain lobe that science doesn't understand well. Mulder thinks the boy may be the key to understanding human potential and to everything in the X-Files. He presses for immunity for the shooter. Later, Mulder goes back to the shooter and says the Attorney General is considering immunity but needs more information. The shooter says the boy is a missing link and Mulder jumps to the conclusion that Gibson has alien genes and is proof of ancient astronauts. Diana is watching Gibson in a motel safe house. Gibson senses there's a man outside with a gun. Diana is shot through the window. Later, as Diana is loaded into an ambulance, Mulder arrives. She is barely alive. The shooter has been found dead in his cell, with a pack of Morleys in the cell. CSM has Gibson and turns him over to the Consortium. Mulder accosts Spender in public and accuses him of working for CSM. Spender, in turn, presses charges against Mulder. Skinner informs Scully that there is talk in the Justice Department of reassigning Mulder and Scully and closing the X-Files. Mulder thinks it was all a plan against him, and this time they may have won. CSM is in the X-Files office. He takes the Samantha Mulder file and leaves, meeting Spender in the hall. "I can give you access," he tells Spender. "Who are you?" "I'm your father." Before more can be said, a fire alarm goes off. The X-Files filing cabinets are on fire, and the fire soon spreads to the rest of the office. When Mulder and Scully arrive the office has been destroyed. All the files are gone. Scully gives Mulder a long hug, and the fifth season of the X-Files ends. June 19, 1998 The public premier of The X-Files Movie. The events of the movie are presumably set during the summer of 1998. The telegram in the final scenes has the date "September 6" on it. This Timeline makes the assumption that most of the events in the movie happen in August, with some of the concluding scenes in September. It has been pointed out, however, that the action in Antarctica is sunlit, and the sun only shines in Antarctica during Southern Hemisphere's Summer, or from about September 21 to March 21. August, 1998 In Blackwood, Texas, a boy named Stevie falls through ground near his home into an underground cave. Black Oil flows out of the ground and enters his body. Three friends call for help, and the Black Oil also enters four firemen who enter the cave to rescue Stevie. A mysterious bio-containment team arrives, hauls off some of the infected people and sets up biocontainment tents over the cave opening. A week later, with the X-Files closed, Mulder and Scully (still partners) are in Dallas to assist with the search for a bomb. A threat has been received to blow up the Dallas Federal building. Without permission, Mulder has gone to a nearby building, checking it for explosives, because none have been found in the Federal building. Scully came along. Taking a break from the search, Mulder enters a room with vending machines and discovers the bomb inside a vending machine, with a timer counting down to zero, but he is locked in the room. Using cell phones, he informs Scully who mobilizes authorities to evacuate the building. A cutting torch is used to open the door to the vending room. The agent in charge, Darius Michaud, orders everyone else out of the building, indicating that he will disarm the bomb alone. Mulder hesitates, because it is against FBI policy to leave an agent alone in such circumstances, but Mulder allows himself to be rushed outside. Michaud takes no steps to disarm the bomb, waiting calmly for death, and a massive explosion rocks the building, as the final evacuation vehicles race away from the scene. Back in Washington, Scully testifies before an investigation committee of the Office of Professional Responsibility that, in effect, is looking to place the blame for not preventing the explosion. Scully and Mulder learn that a boy and three firemen have been reported killed in the explosion, along with Michaud. Scully is informed that she and Mulder will be split up, and she considers resigning from the FBI. She says being stationed at a field office, such as Omaha, would not hold the interest for her. Later, Mulder goes to a bar to drown his sorrows and meets Dr. Kurtzweil, who says he was an associate of Mulder's father, but who left the Project. Kurtzweil claims that the fatalities in the explosion were already dead before the explosion, in a Federal Emergency Management Agency office in the building, and that the explosion was to cover their deaths. He says Michaud sacrificed himself for the Conspiracy. We see a scene at the bio-containment facility set up at the cave. Another human body is there with its skin turning transparent. Inside a creature can be seen, growing and feeding on the body as scientists study it. As the Cigarette Smoking Man inspects the site, Black Oil is being pumped through pipes at the biocontainment site, possibly into unmarked tanker trucks outside. Mulder rousts Scully out of bed and they go to the Bethesda Naval Hospital morgue where the bodies of some of the fatalities have been sent. She finds that they were not killed by the explosion but have some sort of virus in them that is dissolving their internal organs. Mulder returns to the bar and talks with Kurtzweil who claims the FEMA story about an outbreak of the Hanta virus is a lie. Meanwhile, Scully is almost caught by security personnel as she studies the body in the morgue. At the biocontainment site, the alien unexpectedly exits the body, before the vaccine can be tested and attacks one of the scientists. He is sealed in the ground to contain the escaped alien. The Elders meet in London and are alarmed that the virus has mutated. Instead of just occupying the human body, it is growing a new alien organism inside. It becomes clear that the original intent of the Consortium, 50 years ago, was to cooperate with the Colonists as a way of buying time to develop a vaccine. They decide they must prove to the Colonists that they know about the mutated virus by showing them a human body in which an organism is growing. The Consortium has been working for years to help the Colonists spread the virus, under the impression that at worst the human race might be enslaved. Now they are concerned that they may have been misled and that the alien Colonists will commit genocide against the human race. The Well Manicured Man is upset that decisions have been made before he arrived. During this meeting we meet Strugholdt, who is the apparent leader of the Consortium. He lives in Tunis and flew in especially for this crisis meeting. The agents fly to Texas and find evidence of the same virus in archeological bone fragments recovered from the explosion -- apparently the remains of one of the hunters 37,000 years ago. The local officials tell Mulder and Scully where the bones were collected and they go there, to the site where Stevie fell into the cave. (This site may be several hours drive from Dallas, because the agents arrive near sundown.) Stevie's friends tell the agents that the trucks just left an hour earlier, and the agents pursue. They eventually find a field of irrigated corn in the middle of the Texas brush, near the US border. At night they enter one of two illuminated domes in the field. As they are exploring, louvers open releasing swarms of bees. Mulder and Scully escape the dome without being stung, then are chased through the corn by helicopters. Back in Washington, Scully presents her additional evidence to the investigation committee, but they are unconvinced. Meanwhile Mulder and Kurtzweil talk, and conclude that the corn is genetically modified to carry the virus, which is picked up by bees. At Mulder's apartment later, Scully tells Mulder that she has been transferred to Salt Lake City, but that she has resigned. Mulder entreats her to continue to help him pursue the truth. In a tender moment they almost kiss, but Scully is stung by a bee that has apparently been inside her clothing all the way back from Texas. She immediately goes into shock. Mulder calls for help and an ambulance quickly arrives. At the last minute as they depart with Scully, the ambulance driver shoots Mulder, grazing his temple. As the first ambulance (carrying agents of the Consortium) leave, the real ambulance arrives. Mulder wakes up in a hospital, under guard. This incident represents at least the eighth time in her FBI career that Scully has been kidnapped, abducted or taken hostage. The Lone Gunmen and Skinner help him leave secretly (wearing Byer's clothes with Byers in Mulder's bed, talking with Skinner), and Mulder seeks out Dr. Kurtzweil at the bar. Instead he meets the Well Manicured Man. Kurtzweil is apparently dead but the WMM (who opposes surrendering to the Colonists) invites Mulder into his car. He explains the alien virus, saying that it was the original inhabitant of the planet, millions of years ago. He says many aliens await underground for the Colonists arrival. He says the Consortium cooperated initially because they thought the human race would just be "occupied" by the virus. There is concern, however, that the Colonists plan to use humans to gestate a new race of aliens, which is a violation of their agreement. There is an implication, not completely clear, that the bees distribute the alien virus that is picked up from genetically engineered corn pollen. WMM and Mulder discuss Mulder's father, William. He allowed Samantha to be taken into the cloning program, so she could survive as a genetic hybrid, immune to the virus. WMM gives Mulder a vaccine and geographic coordinates where Scully can be found. They may be WMM's way of insuring that the vaccine would be entered into the Colonist's environment, because he knows Mulder will do anything to save Scully. WMM dies in an explosion of his car just after Mulder leaves, because he betrayed the Consortium. Mulder makes his way to Wilkes Land Antarctica (which is south of Australia) 48 hours later, and driving a Snowcat he discovers an installation where WMM said it would be. He runs out of gas and as he approaches on foot, he falls into a hole in the snow, sliding several dozen feet or more down a pipe in the snow. He finds himself inside a huge alien spacecraft. He eventually finds Scully, naked and sealed in a fluid canister that is apparently used to incubate the virus inside her. He breaks the canister open and injects her with the vaccine. There is a quick response that also affects the hundreds or thousands of other canisters, also containing incubating humans. Mulder wraps Scully in his parka and puts his outer snow pants on her (a scene not shown on screen) and they begin to make their way out of the spaceship. Scully is semi-conscious, at best. At one point he has to perform CPR on her as aliens in nearby canisters come to life and try to break out, but Scully coughs and revives. Soon after, the agents are pursued by these highly aggressive aliens, saved only by an earthquake caused by the ship beginning to move, that knocks the aliens back down into a hole in the ice. As Mulder and Scully run away from the buried ship, the ice and snow collapses behind them, forming a giant crater that expands behind them as they run. They barely escape as the giant ship lifts off and departs. Scully is groggy and does not clearly see the ship depart. Some fans claim to hear her murmur "I saw it." Others claim she says no such thing. (Movie) Early September, 1998 Again returning to Washington, Scully presents her final evidence to the Office of Professional Responsibility committee. Her conclusion is that the FBI does not currently have an investigation unit competent to study the evidence. Outdoors, Mulder tells Scully that she was right to quit, but she says now that she cannot, because the virus has a cure and they can save many lives by continuing the search for the truth. (Movie) September 6-7, 1998 In the Tunesian desert, we see another field of irrigated corn, and domes housing bees. The Cigarette Smoking Man pays a call on Strughold to say that Mulder has been reinvigorated by his experiences. Strughold dismisses Mulder as an annoyance who has seen only pieces and does not understand the greater whole of The Project. Strughold adds "One man alone cannot Fight the Future." CSM shows Strughold a telegram that arrived the day before saying "X-Files reopened, please advise." (Movie) Mid-September 1998 The Beginning. In Phoenix, AZ, an employee of Roush Technologies, Sandy, is sick when a corporate carpool van leaves him off at home. In the morning, he doesn't come out to the van so another Roush employee enters the house looking for him. Sandy is on a sofa with his chest exploded outward. The other man is attacked and killed by an alien before he can leave the building. In Washington, Mulder is using high tech equipment to salvage information from the burned X-Files. The investigating committee has trouble believing the story of the alien ship in the antarctic. After the meeting, Scully tells Mulder that she still must rely on science. Skinner tells Mulder that his reassignment to the X-Files has been denied, but Skinner directs Mulder to a file folder in the X-Files office. In the folder, Mulder finds information on Sandy's death. Agent Spender walks in and we learn that Spender and agent Diana Foley have been assigned to the X-Files. Meanwhile the Cigarette Smoking Man informs the Consortium that the alien is alive and is being sought. He enters a surgery facility and tells the doctors that Gibson Praise must be prepared to travel. Gibson's ability to read minds may help locate the alien. Mulder and Scully visit Sandy's house, violating FBI rules, and find a piece of claw left in a gouged wall. At the Rolling Hills Nuclear plant, 60 miles from Phoenix, a nuclear engineer named Homer investigates an unusual gauge reading and is killed by the alien, which is hiding in the hot chambers near the reactor. By the time Mulder and Scully learn of the incident and arrive there are dozens of FBI and emergency response people at the plant. Spender and Foley deny Mulder and Scully access to the scene and as Mulder and Scully leave, they find Gibson hiding in their car. They take him to the Camelback View Motel. Gibson's skull has been cut open and stitched back shut. He has a fever and is not well. Scully argues that Gibson could be their last best chance to prove Mulder's beliefs. As they leave to take Gibson to a hospital, Foley arrives and tells Mulder that she accepted the X-Files assignment to protect Mulder's interests. The creature is in the reactor #4 building. Mulder goes with her to find it while Scully takes Gibson to the hospital. Gibson is soon kidnapped by an operative of the Cigarette Smoking Man and also taken to the nuclear plant. Mulder and Foley find what appears to be a shed skin of the alien. They see the operative and Gibson, and follow to the reactor chamber, which has control rods extending down into a pool of water. The FBI agents are locked out of the room but watch the alien kill the operative. Gibson, apparently communicates with the alien, and both disappear to somewhere Mulder cannot see them. The investigating committee reprimands Mulder and Scully and orders no involvement with the X-Files. Scully tells Mulder that the claw found in Sandy's house contains a DNA match with the virus, which also matches DNA in Gibson. In fact, the DNA matches inactive DNA in all humans, but it is active in Gibson. The Cigarette Smoking Man visits agent Spender to congratulate him on how the affair was handled. At the nuclear plant, we see Gibson hiding as under water in the reactor vessel, we see the alien again shed its skin. Rather than the reptilian creature we saw in the X-Files Movie, it now looks like a "regular" gray alien. November 1998 Dreamland Part I. In rural Nevada Mulder and Scully drive down a highway at night. Mulder has been contacted by a source who claims to work at Area 51 at Groom Lake, a top secret facility. Mulder believes the source may know the truth about UFOs and alien life. As they approach the base, they are surrounded by government vehicles and soldiers order Mulder and Scully out of their car. A civilian official, Fletcher Morris, tells them that they must leave, and that there are no flying saucers. But a UFO flies over and Mulder and Morris change bodies. Scully, not realizing this, pulls "Mulder" (really Fletcher) on the arm and they leave. Mulder, who everyone else thinks is Fletcher, plays it by ear and goes back to Area 51. His name tag has the organizational name "Majestic" on it. A video display at the security desk makes it clear to him that he looks like Fletcher. Mulder finds Fletcher's office by the name plate on the wall and sees photographs of Fletcher with presidents and other VIPs. He tries to phone Scully, but she is out of the vehicle getting gasoline. A woman calls who is obviously Fletcher's wife. She is unhappy he is at work so late and complains. Another agent comes in and says phone records confirm that an informant did call the FBI. The agent gives "Fletcher" a ride home. Mulder does not get into bed with Fletcher's wife, spending the night in a recliner chair, watching a porno channel on the TV. In the countryside, authorities are at a crash site. The co-pilot is physically embedded in a boulder but still alive. The pilot is speaking an unintelligible language. At FBI HQ the next morning, Assistant Director Kersh reprimands the agents. Fletcher, posing as Mulder, promises to never investigate an X-File again. He flirts with Kersh's secretary and Scully tells him he is acting unusual. Meanwhile, Fletcher's wife, Joanne, wakes Mulder. Mulder cannot handle the Fletcher family home life, which includes two teenagers. He locates Fletcher's car keys and his partner calls to tell him that something big is going on. At Area 51, Mulder learns that the pilot of the test craft is speaking Hopi, and claiming to be an elderly Hopi woman. The woman has been located, and she appears to have the memories of the pilot. Later, from a payphone, Mulder reaches Scully in Washington. She does not believe his story but orders a trace on the call. As Mulder drives his car he sees the white government vehicles rushing the other direction. One slows to tell "Fletcher" to follow. The gas station where Mulder placed the call has been wrecked. Inside, the attendant is embedded in the floor and someone says "it happened again." A soldier kills the attendant and the gas station is burned. Scully visits Mulder's apartment. Kersh's secretary, giggling, is just leaving. Scully tells "Mulder" that the call was traced to near Groom Lake but he says they would get in trouble if they attempt to follow up. Meanwhile, Mulder is in a meeting at Area 51. There has been a tear in the space-time continuum, apparently caused by the antigravity propulsion system of the craft. General Wegman, commander of the installation, mentions "we've been flying them since 1953." There is no way to know if they can undo the effects of the tear. Scully is back in Nevada. She finds the destroyed gas station, and finds two coins fused together. In the morning, Scully shows up at Fletcher's house. Joanne accuses her husband of infidelity. Mulder tries to convince Scully of who he really is, even describing what she eats for lunch -- mixing bee pollen in with her yogurt. She still does not believe and drives off. Kersh calls her cell phone and threatens that she must do exactly as he says. Fletcher, posing as Mulder, is also in Nevada and has called Area 51 to report a security leak. Mulder steals the flight recorder from the crashed craft and meets Scully, but it is a setup and Mulder is arrested. As Mulder is hauled off, he shouts repeatedly to Scully, "he's not me, he's not me." To be continued next week. Dreamland Part II. (The episode opens with narration by Morris Fletcher over home movies showing young Fox and Samantha Mulder. Fox is dressed as Spock from Star Trek and his fake ears keep coming off. Fletcher says Mulder has ruined a brilliant career but "now all that's gonna change.") As Mulder is taken away by the authorities, Scully begins to wonder. Mulder is put in a holding cell beside the UFO pilot in the Navaho woman's body. Scully is reprimanded by Kersh and given a two-week suspension. Morris invites her to Mulder's apartment for a "home cooked meal." Mulder is questioned by the commander of the installation, Wegman. Security has learned that the flight recorder he gave to the FBI was not the recorder from the crash. Not knowing the reason for the switched recorders, Mulder claims he did it as part of a plan to identify the informant. No longer in trouble, Mulder goes to the Fletcher home and tries to explain to Joanna that he is not her husband, but she does not believe him. Morris arrives home at Mulder's with bags of groceries. He searches the apartment and finds the bedroom, filled with boxes and junk. (Mulder always sleeps on his futon in the living room.) Later, Scully arrives and Morris gives her the tour of a redecorated apartment, including the bedroom with a canopied waterbed. He attempts to seduce Scully and she pulls out her handcuffs, saying "do you know what I'd really like to do?" Morris is tricked into cuffing himself to the bed, but Scully pulls out her gun and accuses him of being Morris Fletcher, not Mulder. He admits it, saying that he couldn't stand his life and that he has no idea how to reverse the body switch. As they talk the informant calls on the phone and arranges a personal meeting in Rachel, Nevada. Back in Nevada, Scully and Morris go to a bar to meet the informant. Morris is obeying Scully and goes in while Scully waits in the car. Morris discovers that the informant is General Wegman, who gives Morris the actual flight recorder. But Mulder and Joanna are also in the bar, because Mulder wants to be somewhere public. Seeing Morris there, Mulder goes outside and talks with Scully, who admits that she believes his story. Area 51 security agents enter the bar, and Mulder, Morris, Scully and Wegman all have to duck around to avoid being seen. Mulder, Morris and Wegman all end up in the men's room and hatch a plot. Wegman boldly walks out and orders the Area 51 agents outside, where they find Mulder carrying a paper bag. Inside is not the flight recorder but a six-pack of beer. Morris, meanwhile, slips out and drives off with Scully. The Lone Gunmen are eating dinner when Scully and Morris arrive. It takes them a while to be convinced that Morris is not Mulder. Morris claims that most of what the Gunmen print in their publications is invented to hide the truth -- much of it made up by Morris himself. He claims that Saddam Hussein is his creation -- an actor who causes trouble whenever a distraction is needed. The Gunmen decrypt the flight recorder and find that in addition to the regular data items it tracks, it records things like Tachyon Flux and Gravitational Displacement. Scully and Morris go back to Nevada yet again and meet with Mulder. The Gunmen have concluded that what happened was such a fluke that there is no way to recreate the body switch safely. Morris has been tasked to return the flight recorded to Area 51. Scully is suspended. she has to leave Mulder without hope. The next day, Mulder talks with Wegman. Why was he the informant? Wegman sabotaged the aircraft to disable the Stealth Module so Mulder would see it. Looking back on his career, Wegman regrets that he has been involved in misleading the American people. "We just fly these birds. They engineer them up in Utah." Wegman says he doesn't know the truth and asks Mulder if aliens really exist, to which Mulder has no answer. Three young people, on a lark, are hiking up a mountain to where they might see UFOs. Some kind of visual wave approaches and passes them and a boy and girl who had been kissing are fused together. The other boy runs for help, flagging down a car on the highway that carries one of the Area 51 security agents. When they reach the other two, however, they are no longer fused and have no memory of the events. Scully and Morris drive past the gas station that was destroyed a few days earlier and it is undamaged. The owner is alive and well and has no memory of trouble. They rush to the Fletcher home where Mulder is packing to leave. As Scully tells Mulder that the time warp appears to be reversing itself, Morris talks with Joanna. He describes their wedding and other memories and she believes that he is her husband, although in Mulder's body. Area 51 authorities show up and take Mulder, Morris and Scully into custody. They take them back to the highway where Mulder and Morris exchanged bodies. The bodies of Morris and Mulder flicker and they are back in their own bodies, but time has reversed and they are at the moment when they first exchanged bodies, with no memory of the events. Back in Washington, Mulder and Scully's (only) trip to Nevada has not been noticed by Kersh. Scully finds the fused coins on her desk and is bewildered as to where they came from. Mulder returns home and enters his apartment, but it is still decorated the way Morris left it. He has to open his door again to see if it is really apartment 42. Early 1999 S.R. 819. Assistant Director Skinner is at a gym, in a boxing ring with a sparring partner. He becomes disoriented and gets knocked out, waking up in a hospital. While waiting for a doctor, Skinner's cell phone rings and a scrambled voice says, "it's in you -- you have 24 hours -- you are already dead." The doctor, however, releases Skinner, after drawing blood for some tests, because there appears to be nothing wrong except for a bruise on his ribs. Later that evening at FBI headquarters, Mulder and Skinner talk. Skinner is on a couch in his office and is having trouble seeing and Mulder calls Scully into the office to consult. They wonder if Skinner might have been poisoned. Retracing his day, Skinner remembers a man who bumped into him in the hallway. They identify him as Kenneth Orgel, a physicist who is an advisor to a US Senate committee. Mulder and Skinner go to see Orgel, who denies that he was at the FBI building, but there are several men in black in Orgel's home. After a chase, Mulder catches one. He has Tunisian diplomatic papers, so Skinner orders Mulder to release him. Orgel has disappeared with the other men in black. In his house, Mulder finds papers showing Orgel with Senator Matheson, who has occasionally helped Mulder with tips. Scully goes to talk with the doctor who saw Skinner, Dr. Platte. The blood tests have not yet been done. They find tiny bits of carbon in Skinner's blood. It is unclear what they are, but they are multiplying. Scully eventually finds that the carbon is creating a matrix and building structures in Skinner's blood. Mulder visits Senator Matheson. Orgel has been working on a bill to provide aid to third world countries via expanded exports, but the Senator declines to help Mulder further with the case. On embassy row, Skinner pulls into a parking garage and his car is fired on by the Tunisian. He and Skinner stalk each other through the garage, but as the Tunisian. is about to shoot Skinner, a car races through the garage and runs down the Tunisian., killing him. Skinner collapses. Scully learns that Skinner is being brought back to the hospital. An emergency room doctor is preparing to remove Skinner's arm. Much of his body is now discolored and mottled. Scully barges in and stops the procedure, because the problem is in his blood. In Skinner's office, Mulder finds that Skinner has been doing a security review on export laws involving new technology. Going to the hospital to inform Scully of his discoveries, Mulder takes a phone call from the synthesized voice, and finds that a man is in the hallway using a handheld data device, a Palm Pilot. Mulder chases the man, who we see to have long hair, escapes, leaving his car on a higher level of the parking garage. Soon after, the long-haired man also calls the Senator. At the FBI impound lot, the car driven by the long-haired man has been gone over by a forensics expert. It has strands of wig hair in it, and PCB traces on the tires. The PCBs could come from any abandoned power plant. Senator Matheson arrives at an abandoned power plant and finds Orgel tied up and with the same skin mottling that Skinner has. Orgel swears that he told the FBI nothing. The long-haired man is watching, moves a control on his Palm Pilot and Orgel dies. Meanwhile, Scully has an idea to filter Skinner's blood to try to remove the carbon. Skinner tells Scully he is sorry for not helping her and Mulder more; he always played it safe and didn't take sides. All of a sudden, Skinner remembers seeing a man at the gym and at the FBI office -- with long hair. Mulder arrives at the power plant and finds the Senator's car. Inside, Matheson tells him that Orgel is dead, killed by the conspiracy. What they put in Skinner is nanotechnology -- tiny robots. They wanted S.R. 819 in order to be able to export the nanites and the Senator claims he is not involved. At the hospital, Skinner's heart stops. As a sheet is pulled over Skinner's body, a hand is seen to adjust a remote control, and Skinner revives. It is the long-haired man. Three weeks later, Skinner's is doing well. Whatever is inside him is dormant and he is back at work. S.R. 819 has been withdrawn. Mulder thinks it is about the X-Files, but Skinner will not authorize further investigation, which Scully finds odd because of Skinner's comments about helping them more. Later, Skinner enters his car in the FBI parking garage. Alex Krycek is waiting for him and it is obvious that it was he wearing the long hair wig. He tells Skinner that he could press the button and kill Skinner at any time. "What's this all about?" asks Skinner. "All in good time," replies Krycek. [There is no clear date reference in this episode. The "early 1999" entry given above is strictly speculation. It could have happened almost any time after the X-Files Movie.] February 1999? Two Fathers. (Most of this episode is told as narration by the Cigarette Smoking Man. Who he is talking to is not clear. The episode begins with flashbacks to many past conspiracy arc episodes, laying the groundwork for the current story.) In a railroad yard in Arlington, Virginia, doctors in biocontainment suits make an incision in a patient's stomach. Green acid boils out and the cut heals itself. Another doctor arrives and is told that after 25 years the work is complete, but a faceless man arrives and sets fire to the medical team. We see that the patient is Cassandra Spender, who has been missing for a year. The Cigarette Smoking Man discusses the conspiracy for his unseen guest. It is hard to believe that the end is here. It was a perfect conspiracy, preparing the way for the invasion of an alien race and creating a slave race of human-alien hybrids. They kept it secret for 50 years, since Roswell, but a rebel alien race came to upset their plans. Skinner tells agent Spender that his mother is in the hospital, having survived the attack in the rail car. At the hospital, she does not explain what happened but asks to talk to agent Mulder. Not happy about it, Spender eventually tells Mulder but does not specifically ask for help. Mulder believes that it is a set-up, designed to entrap Mulder and get him out of the FBI completely. Meanwhile, the Smoking Man visits the one doctor who survived the rail car attack. He is in a hyperbaric chamber because of his burns. The doctor says the rebels came to take Cassandra so they can expose the conspiracy. The doctor points out that he must not be questioned, and with regrets, the Smoking Man turns off his oxygen supply. In Silver Spring, Maryland, one of the elders (played by actor George Murdock) is informed by the Smoking Man that an emergency meeting of the Consortium has been called, but a faceless man arrives and burns the elder. Mulder and Scully realize that they have seen these burned bodies before and that Scully has been kidnapped and subjected to tests in a rail car in the past. They meet with Cassandra in secret at the hospital. Long confined to a wheelchair, she can now walk fine and feels wonderful. She says the woman Mulder saw last year was not his sister. Samantha is with the aliens. The doctors were also working with the aliens who are here to wipe the human race off the planet. They are taking over the universe, infecting all other life forms with a black substance called "purity," which is their life force. Agent Spender is also in danger, because he is allied with the men who are working with the aliens, including her ex-husband, Cassandra says. The Smoking Man tells his unseen guest that he killed to keep his colleagues from finding Cassandra because he couldn't bring himself to allow the death of his ex-wife, and that his colleagues did not realize that their group had been infiltrated. In the meeting of the consortium, we see the burned elder alive and well. He suggests that the consortium should ally with the rebels but Krycek refutes the suggestion, saying that helping the invaders has provided time to develop a way to fight them, but he gets "shushed" by the Smoking Man. At the FBI, Mulder and Scully use Spender's computer to research Cassandra and agent Spender. They locate a photograph of Cassandra's ex-husband, C.G.B. Spender, and it is the Smoking Man. Skinner warns them to leave the X-Files office, but Spender arrives with other men and Mulder and Scully are put on administrative leave for unauthorized access to the X-Files office. Spender reports to his father that Mulder has been suspended. They argue and Spender is told "you pale to Fox Mulder." But later, because he has been exposed, the Smoking Man goes back to Spender and assigns him to kill the rebel masquerading as an elder, using an "ice pick" weapon. Krycek drives Spender to the Elder's mansion but Spender bungles the attack and Krycek, who has been serving as back-up, appears and kills the alien. Spender is shocked at evidence of the truth of his mother's claims. Krycek admits that Cassandra has been the subject of experiments for 25 years and that agent Spender has, in effect, been protecting the project that has harmed his mother. Meanwhile, Scully has researched C.G.B. Spender. The name is certainly an alias, but Scully has a box full of information, including a 1973 photograph of C.G.B. and Bill Mulder. They worked together for 25 years on a classified project and it is clear that the project is still going on. We finally learn that the Cigarette Smoking Man has been talking to Diana Fowley. He says she has never failed him and she answers that it's not too late, she will help. Cassandra is not in her hospital room and her guard is gone. She shows up at Mulder's apartment, scared because "they" are right behind her. As someone else knocks on Mulder's door, Cassandra says she is "the one," and tells Mulder he must kill her. As the pounding on Mulder's door continues, and as Scully says "no, we have to protect her," Mulder draws his gun and aims at Cassandra. To be continued, next week. February 1999? One Son. In opening scenes of the episode, we see the Elders on October 13, 1973, in a giant hangar. The hangar doors open and many gray aliens enter. They are presented a folded US flag. In Mulder's apartment, Mulder has his gun aimed at Cassandra, but the door bursts open and several men dressed in biocontainment suits enter, saying they are with the Centers for Disease Control. Diana Fowley is also there, claiming that they have been infected with an unknown disease. They are taken to Fort Marlene where they go through decontamination procedures. Cassandra is kept separate from Mulder and Scully. Diana tells them that the CDC was called by agent Spender. Scully argues that nobody is infected and wants to see Cassandra. She is suspended from the FBI, however, and cannot see Cassandra. Scully thinks Cassandra has been taken to continue the experiments. Mulder thinks she was taken because "she is the one." Krycek reports to the Smoking Man that he has recovered all of Cassandra's medical records and concludes that the rebels struck because if the Colonists find out about her, they will begin the colonization. The Smoking Man says maybe we need to let colonization begin -- it's the only way for us to be safe and see our loved ones again. At Fort Marlene, Mulder sneaks through the halls and in a darkened room finds Marita Covarubius. Her hair is in ratty and she is far from her usual elegant appearance. She says if "they" find her with Mulder they will kill her. She has been subjected to terrible tests -- infected with the black oil to test the vaccine. Mulder realizes that the hybrid program was done in cooperation with the aliens, but was just a way of buying time. If the aliens learn that a successful hybrid exists, they will begin the colonization. Jeffrey and Diana visit Cassandra Spender at Fort Marlene. Jeffrey had her taken into medical isolation to protect her (apparently not realizing what fans know, that Fort Marlene is a stronghold of the Consortium.) Cassandra says if the Consortium gets her, everyone dies. Meanwhile, Mulder is summoned to the office of the Lone Gunmen. Scully has had them research Diana Fowley. She took a position in Europe with the FBI counter-terrorism unit but there are no records of her cases. Other sources show that she spent her time visiting every MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) chapter, showing particular interest in female abduction victims. She also visited Tunisia weekly. Scully thinks she's monitoring the abduction experiments. Mulder says he is not convinced. Mulder, however, goes to see Diana. She is not home so he picks her lock and searches her apartment, finding nothing incriminating. While he is there, the Smoking Man enters, and Mulder holds him at gunpoint. He came looking for his son, who has chosen the wrong side. Mulder points out that CSM is the one who is experimenting on women without their permission. CSM says Bill Mulder was against it, but came to his senses and gave up Samantha. The Project was approved by majority vote in 1973, and became an organization outside of any government. They voted to cooperate with the aliens and the aliens insisted that they turn over their children and loved ones, including Cassandra. They were sent with the aliens on the promise that they would be returned when the colonization began. The choices, CSM says, were not made lightly. Samantha was abducted from her home because Bill Mulder resisted, but the only way to get the alien fetus was for Samantha to also be taken. The DNA from the alien fetus was the only way to develop a race of hybrids that could survive the holocaust. Bill Mulder's idea was to use the alien DNA to develop a vaccine. "We've succeeded in spite of ourselves," says CSM. Colonization will now begin. A state of emergency will be declared because of the outbreak of the alien virus, delivered by bees. He gives Mulder a slip of paper. Mulder argues that it has to be stopped or everyone dies. CSM makes clear to Mulder they they will both survive and that Fox can see his sister returned, or die in vain like the rest of the world. He urges Mulder to "save her, save yourself," and leaves the apartment without objection from Mulder. Meanwhile, Jeffrey arrives at the meeting place of the Elders in New York. Only Krycek is there, and he says they have all left for West Virginia where they will be prepared to receive the alien genes and be taken by the Colonists. The doctors enter Cassandra's room to begin her for transportation, injecting her with a drug to immobilize her. CSM is there and he and Cassandra talk privately. She calls him the biggest bastard of all and he does not defend himself, except to say that were it not for his actions everyone would be dead. He ordered the abductions to save her and Jeffrey. She pleads with him to kill her, to stop the colonization, but he cannot. Mulder is still in Diana Fowley's apartment when she returns. He tells her about his conversation with CSM and says sometimes the only way those you love can survive is for you to give up. He shows her the paper given to him by CSM, that says "El Rico Air Base." Diana has no reaction, other than to kiss and hug him. Meanwhile, Jeffrey finds his mother gone from Fort Marlene. Marita finds him and says they are packing everything up. They are going to leave and not take her, but she tells Spender she knows where they are going and how they will take Cassandra there and she begs him to help her. A doctor enters the room where the original alien fetus is kept in liquid nitrogen, in order to prepare it for transportation. A nurse enters -- she is a rebel and kills the doctor, taking the fetus and assuming the identity of the doctor. Mulder and Scully talk by phone. He wants to take Scully to West Virginia, presumably to get her included in the group that is saved. She, however, has learned from Spender where Cassandra is, in the Potomac Yards where she will be transported by train. Mulder sends Diana on ahead to West Virginia and goes to meet Scully, because it is their last chance to stop the colonization. The train is already rolling when they get there. Scully, driving, blocks the rails with their car, but the train wrecks the car and continues unstopped. Skinner arrives and Mulder and Scully tell him they must head for El Rico Air Force Base, in West Virginia. In the giant hangar at the air force base, CSM arrives and notes that there are still people missing. The first Elder says they are waiting to send the signal summoning the colonists until everyone has arrived. The rebel arrives with Cassandra. One person missing is Alex Krycek, who is at Fort Marlene. He discovers the dead doctor and that the alien fetus has been taken by rebels. In the hall, he finds Jeffrey and Marita. They can't get out because the security guards will not recognize Jeffrey's authority to remove a patient. Krycek says it is all going to hell and that the rebels are going to win. Diana arrives at the hangar. An alien ship arrives, but the Elders are puzzled because they have not yet sent the signal. The rebel posing as the doctor presumably called his allies. Rebels rush into the hangar and surround the Elders and their families, but CSM and Diana are to the side and quickly escape as we hear screams from the remaining humans. Later, back at the FBI, Assistant Director Kersh is horrified at the pictures of the burned victims at El Rico AFB. Skinner is also in the meeting. Spender says he might have prevented the deaths. Agents Mulder and Scully might also have prevented the deaths, he points out, if they had not been suspended. Spender says he was wrong to bring charges against Mulder and Scully, and urges that the two assistant directors do everything they can to get Mulder and Scully back on the X-Files. Kersh asks Mulder if he has answers and Mulder says that he has had answers for years but nobody would listen. The future is here and all bets are off. Later, in the X-Files office, Jeffrey arrives to clean out his things and finds CSM waiting for him, holding the picture of himself and Bill Mulder from 1973. CSM says Bill Mulder was a good man, but he betrayed CSM. Jeffrey says he knows enough about his father to hate him. CSM draws his gun and fires at Jeffrey, then sadly leaves the office. (This episode leaves many questions, including how much, if any, of the structure of the consortium remains alive. We have clear evidence that the Consortium was made up of many people speaking different languages and apparently from different countries, including conrad Strughold in Tunisia. They certainly were not all there in West Virginia. Might there have been multiple pickup points around the world? Is Strughold still alive and in control?) February, March or April 1999? The Unnatural. On a beautiful Saturday afternoon, Mulder and Scully are in the office. Mulder is looking through old newspapers for evidence of flying saucers and finds an article mentioning Arthur Dales in Roswell, New Mexico, in a story relating to baseball. Scully has little time for baseball and accuses Mulder of being more interested in baseball than in work. Mulder goes to Dales' home and finds another man there, who says he is the former FBI agent's brother, also named Arthur Dales. (He says their parents were not very creative in selecting names.) Mulder tells Dales that the newspaper picture also appears to show an alien bounty hunter. Mulder has to validate himself by answering baseball trivia questions, but Dales eventually invites Mulder in. Dales asks the philosophical question of whether a passion can change a man, really shapeshift and transform him. On June 29, 1947, Dales was a police officer in Roswell and was assigned to protect negro baseball star Josh Exley from racist threats that the game of baseball should be kept white. Exley plays for an all-negro team called the Roswell Grays. Dales ends up traveling on the team bus, and at night, in a lightning storm, Exley's reflection in the bus window appears to be the image of a gray alien. The next day, during a game, Exley is hit on the head with a ball and knocked out. He murmurs words in an unknown language and claims to be from Macon, Georgia. Dales finds green acid on the glove used to cushion Exley's head and sends it off to be tested. Dales calls the Macon police and learns that Josh Exley was a six year old child that disappeared about the time Exley arrived in Roswell. The Macon police officer Dales talks with is really a bounty hunter. Exley denies to Dales that he was ever in Macon. Dales thinks Exley "tanked" the game that day because American League scouts were there and he did not want to be recruited into the major leagues, because Exley has a secret. That night, Dales sees a gray alien in Exley's room, wearing a baseball cap and holding a bat. Dales faints at the sight, but the alien wakes him up and tells him he is Exley -- this is his real face. Exley morphs into a pretty girl to prove his claim. The next day they talk more. Exley says his people guard their privacy and don't allow intermingling, but when he discovered baseball he immediately fell in love. The bounty hunter arrives in Roswell, looking for Exley. Posing as Exley, he goes to the lab and kills the lab technician who was testing the acid on the glove. Dales finds Exley and warns him that a witness claims he killed a man. Exley says he talked "with his family" and they want him to come home. He leaves, supposedly to go back home, and several "men in black" question Dales. Exley actually, however, returns to the baseball team and plays a night game. The reason he does this is unclear, but possibly because he wants to hit one more home run and set a record. He considers the baseball diamond to be is real home, even though he seemed to say clearly to Dales that he was returning to his "family." (The teams for this game are wearing uniforms, but it is apparently out in the country and there are no spectators, as if they had to hide the fact that they were playing a mixed-race game.) After a home run, several men in the white sheets of the Ku Klux Klan and carrying guns ride up on horses. Exley has gotten too good and the KKK wants to keep the game of baseball white-only. They threaten Exley, but the white baseball team overcomes the klansmen, one of whom, knocked unconscious, is seen to be a gray alien. Everyone else runs off and Exley confronts the bounty hunter, who quickly awakes. The bounty hunter says he warned Exley and tells him to show his true face so he can die with honor. Exley does not morph. Dales drives up as Exley is killed. The bounty hunter escapes and Dales concentrates on Exley, who is dying. Exley warns Dales that his blood is like acid, but Dales finds only red blood. As Dales had suggested to Mulder, Exley apparently loved the game of baseball so much that it transformed him into a human, but Mulder can't figure out if the story is metaphorical. Late at night, Scully arrives at a baseball diamond where Mulder is hitting baseballs thrown by a machine. Scully claims she was called by "Fox Mantle" for an early or late birthday present. Mulder shows Scully how to use a bat, wrapping his arms closely around her. He jokes about leaving behind a career in medicine to hunt aliens and reveal a global conspiracy, but Scully says "shut up, Mulder. I'm playing baseball," with a big grin on her face. (Note: Scully's birthday is February 23, but this episode could anytime within weeks of her birthday -- probably later because of the nice weather in Washington DC.) September/October 1999? Biogenesis. The episode begins with a narration by Scully describing planet Earth as seen from space, the beginning of life, and the series of mass extinctions that have happened in the past. Are we already on our way to another mass extinction? On the beach in Ivory Coast, a scientist examines a find -- a fragment of a tablet with symbols on it, found in the sand. In his office back at the Ivory Coast university, he joins it with what appears to be another fragment of the same tablet. The two parts merge and the tablet flies across the tent, embedding itself in a Bible. As the scientist removes the tablet, the Bible opens to the Genesis verse that says, "And God blessed them and God said unto them Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the Earth..." Three days later, the scientist, Solomon Merkmallen, is at American University in Washington DC. He meets Dr. Sandoz, who has reportedly found another fragment of the tablet, but Sandoz acts funny and Merkmallen suspects that he is an imposter. The real Dr. Sandoz arrives at the lab and finds Merkmallen dead on the floor, the tablet missing. Skinner briefs Mulder and Scully on their assignment to investigate Merkmallen's death. The body is missing, as is Dr. Sandoz. Merkmallen and Sandoz both believed in the theory of "Panspermia," that life on Earth originated from organisms that arrived from space. When Mulder sees a pencil rubbing of Merkmallen's tablet, he experiences a spell of noise, dissonance and mental disruption. On the way back to Mulder's office, Scully confesses that she no longer sees the need for Mulder's search for "the truth." He has exposed the global conspiracy and the conspirators are all dead. What more does he want? He replies, "My sister." When Mulder and Scully visit Sandoz's lab, the imposter is there. He is the Biology Department chair, Dr. Barnes. He has made a career of exposing religious and scientific fraud. When Scully shows him the rubbing, Mulder experiences another spell. Back at Mulder's office, Scully has brought "Chuck" in, an expert who has appeared in previous episodes. Chuck says the characters on the rubbing are phonetic Navaho, but since it was found in Africa it is likely a fake. Mulder wonders if it would be in Barnes' best interests to hide proof of the real thing. Mulder thinks Barnes killed Merkmallen. The agents visit the Sandoz residence in Maryland. They find a photo of Sandoz with Albert Hosteen and evidence that Sandoz has traveled frequently to Navaho country. In the kitchen trash compactor they find Merkmallen's body. They report to Skinner that there are traces of Cosmic Galactic Radiation in Merkmallen's remains, radiation found only in space that apparently came from the tablet. Mulder thinks Sandoz is innocent. His spells lead him to believe that Skinner is not telling them everything. When the agents leave Skinner's office, we see that Skinner video taped their meeting, and he gives the tape to Alex Krycek. Scully tells Mulder to rest and she goes to New Mexico to find Albert. He is in the hospital and is being taken to treatment as she arrives. In his room she finds another copy of the rubbing. On the back is the verse from Genesis. Scully is told that Albert is dying from cancer. When Albert is returned to his room, Scully sees Sandoz and chases him. He says Albert was the only one of the WWII Navaho code talkers who would work with him. Scully cannot believe that an extraterrestrial artifact would have a Bible verse on it. Albert told Sandoz that Sandoz's fragment contained what appeared to be random letters. Meanwhile, Mulder returns to American University and follows Barnes, experiencing additional spells. Finally he collapses in a stairwell. Krycek walks past him and approaches Barnes saying they are destined to become great friends. Scully telephones Mulder and Diana Fowley answers. Mulder is at home, resting. Mulder tells Scully if it really is a passage from Genesis on the tablet, it is proof that the origin of life on Earth is extraterrestrial. Scully cannot accept that. After the call, Diana phones someone to report on Mulder, then she begins undressing. We see the Smoking Man in a meeting where various men are talking about managing a crisis. Albert is taken into a Navaho sweat lodge for a traditional healing ceremony. Scully will not go in because she does not share their beliefs. Skinner phones her and says Mulder is in serious condition and that Scully should come at once. She arrives to find Mulder in the psychiatric ward, in a padded room. He is delirious with abnormal brain functions. Skinner seems to know details of Scully's investigation that she has not reported. Diana claims Mulder called her and said she was the only one who would believe him. Scully says "You're both liars." In Mulder's office, Scully looks for a camera hidden in the ceiling. (The viewer knows there is a hidden camera -- Scully may or may not have determined it for sure.) Sandoz interrupts her search with a phone call -- he has realized that the random letters on the tablet are gene sequences -- a map to the human genetic structure. If only we could find more pieces...Scully hears a gunshot. Krycek has killed Sandoz. On the beach in Ivory Coast 36 hours later, Scully is at Merkmallen's camp. His workers take her to another tablet found in the sand. It is much larger, and Scully realizes it is actually part of a much larger structure (presumably an alien spacecraft), under water, where the ocean meets the sand. To be continued.... Note: Closed captioning for this episode used the spelling "Navaho," although "Navajo" is also commonly accepted. October 1999?? The Sixth Extinction. In Ivory Coast, Scully is studying the apparent craft found in the surf. She came to find something she did not believe in and stayed on to uncover what Mulder's illness prevents him from finding. In the tent at night, she glimpses a traditionally-garbed native who then disappears. The tent is filled with a swarm of flying insects. The next day, a woman biologist from the University of Ivory Coast arrives, named Amina N'Gebe. The discovery is still a secret but she has learned of it. She warns Scully not to tell the workers about her vision and the insects. They are animists and would take it as a bad sign. They are interrupted when a man working in the surf screams -- he has somehow been burned in the water. Dr. Barnes arrives at the camp. He denies being a killer. He has been threatened by men in Washington, but he knows what has come ashore. He has spent his life searching for answers and he is there to help read what is on the craft. The sea around the craft turns red and Scully sees a vision of the native, who again disappears. Later, Scully is assembling a mosaic of the text on the outside of the craft. Barnes has translated some. The upper surface has references to human genetics. The bottom has quotes from the Bible, Koran, ancient Samaria and other sources, referring to the Day of Judgment. Barnes, however, has become mentally disturbed. He threatens Scully and N'Gebe, saying it is his discovery and nobody leaves before he does, so he will get the credit for the discovery. At night, Barnes discovers that some fish he has in a bag have come back to life. He claims the ship has brought them back to life. As he is distracted, Scully hits him with a chair, then she and N'Gebe escape, driving off. Scully sees the native in the road, then he appears inside the land rover, reaching out his hand to her and saying "some truths are not for you." He disappears, and N'Gebe did not see him. Scully decides it is time for her to go home. Back at the camp, Barnes kills his driver, then later discovers that the driver has come back to life. The driver, looking like a zombie, attacks Barnes, who falls beside part of the craft. Meanwhile, in Washington Mulder's brain is so active he cannot sleep. Skinner enters his cell and Mulder tries to strangle him, but Skinner later finds that Mulder has slipped a note into his pocket saying "help me." Skinner returns and sees Mulder in private. Mulder cannot speak, but manages to write something on Skinner's hand, "Kr..." It leads Skinner to Michael Kritschgau, whose career was destroyed by testifying to Congress about the UFO coverup. At the hospital, Kritschgau recognizes Mulder's condition from past CIA experiments into ESP. Kritschgau gives Mulder a different drug, without Doctors knowing about it, which eases Mulder's condition. Fowley arrives and is suspicious of why Skinner and Kritschgau are there. Mulder tells Skinner that he knows Skinner has been compromised -- that Krycek is blackmailing him. Mulder says Kritschgau can prove what is causing his condition. Later, Kritschgau conducts a test of Mulder's "remote viewing" abilities. Initially the results are modest, but when Skinner has the test speeded up, Mulder shows almost perfect accuracy. Kritschgau says the CIA showed that some people have ESP, but it was never attributed to aliens. Skinner and Kritschgau attempt to remove Mulder from the hospital but Fowley and the doctor interrupt them. Mulder goes into convulsions. Alone later, Fowley talks to Mulder, although he appears to be catatonic. She says she knows Mulder knows that her loyalties are to a man he hates, but he can look inside her and understand why. She loves him and won't let him die. There is no need to prove what he is -- it has been known for a long time. Scully arrives back in Washington and first goes to Skinner's office, where he tells her what has happened to Mulder. He is under security. They won't treat him because they don't know what is wrong with him. She says he is not dying and the cause is alien. She uses her authority as a doctor to get in to see Mulder. Although he doesn't seem aware, she tells him that if he knows what she has found, he will be able to hold on. It is a puzzle, but the answers can save him. "Mulder, please hold on." In the Ivory Coast, Amina N'Gebe returns to the camp with police. They find Barnes, dead near the water. The camera pulls back and there is no evidence of the craft. To be continued... October 1999? The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati. Mulder has a dream of himself at the beach, watching a child and his family, while his mother talks with a doctor. She is upset that his treatment is not helping him. She visits his bedside and talks to him. He answers her in his mind, but she cannot hear him. When she leaves, he is distressed. We then see the Cigarette Smoking Man in his room, and they converse without speaking aloud. The Smoking Man gives Mulder an injection. Only part of Mulder is dying. The Smoking Man offers Mulder a way out. "Take my hand, Fox. I am your father." Mulder gets up and leaves the hospital with him and is driven to a neighborhood where he will assume a new life, in a kind of witness protection program. The Smoking Man tells him he could go back to his other life, and probably die, but encourages him to look around first. In the new house provided to him Mulder finds a larder well stocked with sunflower seeds, and he finds that Deep Throat is alive, not killed six years ago. Deep Throat tells Mulder that he can let go of his guilt -- that they are all just puppets in a master plan. He has suffered a long time, but now he can relax. He claims to live just down the street. In a dream of the beach, Mulder sees a boy whose sand castle, shaped like an alien ship, has washed away. "That's Ok buddy, you can just start again," he tells the boy. Mulder wakes and Diana walks in wearing lingerie. They kiss and the picture fades out. The next morning Diana brings Mulder a cup of coffee in front of their new house. It's all perfect, but Mulder isn't sure what he is doing there. They go to visit the Smoking Man who also lives a few blocks away. The Smoking Man says Samantha has been living there all along, as well as his three grandchildren. Samantha comes up and hugs Fox. We see, however, that Mulder is really in a hospital imagining all this. A device is on his head. Diana asks if Mulder dreams. The Smoking Man answers that dreams are all he has now. Meanwhile, Scully is asleep in the X-Files office, where she had been studying the Navaho texts from the ship. Kritschgau enters and claims that the energy from the piece of the ship reactivated the virus Mulder was infected with two years earlier. Skinner phones and tells Scully that Mulder has disappeared. The records show that Mulder's mother checked him out. Skinner says he shouldn't be involved anymore because he is compromised and the less he knows the better. Arriving back home, Scully hears a noise and finds Albert Hosteen in her apartment, which stuns her because she thought he was very ill. Albert tells her that she must find Mulder before something happens. Scully begins her search and learns that surveillance cameras were blacked out when Mulder left. But Scully gets a glimpse of Tina Mulder talking with the Smoking Man. Scully tries to reach Tina, without luck. Scully receives a book on Native American beliefs and practices, with Navaho writing on it. A section on the Anasasi mentions the sixth extinction and a myth about a man who can save us from the coming plague. She feels that the book explains the symbols on the ship. Scully doesn't know who sent the book to her. Entering Skinner's office, she sees a man who we understand is Krycek assaulting Skinner, but she cannot catch him in the crowded FBI halls. Scully confronts Kritschgau at his apartment and accuses him of being telling someone about Mulder, resulting in Mulder's disappearance. On his laptop she finds her own files of the symbols on the ship. He claims he was having them analyzed by the National Institute of Health. Wherever she got the information, it proves what happened to Mulder, he says. Scully deletes the files from the computer. At FBI HQ, Scully confronts Diana who says Scully could have prevented what happened to Mulder. Scully tries to convince Diana to help, asking her to think, "wouldn't he bust his ass to save you?" Diana responds, "I'm thinking, Agent Scully, I'm always thinking." In a lab, a doctor and the Smoking Man talk. The implication is that Mulder is a compatible human-alien hybrid. He's immune to the coming viral apocalypse, but he may not survive the medical procedures. The Smoking Man says if he doesn't survive, he suffers a hero's fate. Inside his dream, in rapid succession, Mulder sees himself and diana married, and sees her pregnant. He sees himself and Diana with children and his hair is graying, then he is older and sees Diana in a coffin, then sees the boy on the beach. The boy has built a sand castle of the alien ship, but is kicking it apart. "You were supposed to help me," the boy tells Mulder. Albert is back at Scully's apartment. This science makes no sense to her. He answers that she must look inside. They pray together, kneeling on the floor. Meanwhile, Mulder and the Smoking Man are both on operating tables. They are apparently removing genetic material from Mulder and inserting it into the Smoking Man, who says he will carry on for Mulder from here. Diana makes a statement confirming that Mulder is the Smoking Man's son, but suffers an attack of remorse and leaves. In the dream, Mulder is now a very old man. He and the Smoking Man talk. All Mulder's loved ones are dead and are waiting for him; it is time for him to go. As they speak, outside we see flames as alien spacecraft destroy the city. In a different scene, we see Kritschgau is dead on the floor of his apartment. Krycek burns various official documents then leaves with the apartment in flames, taking Kritschgau's laptop with him. Scully wakes up on the floor of her apartment. An envelope has been slipped under her door containing an electronic pass key for a Department of Defense facility. She rushes to the DOD hospital and finds Mulder in the operating room with all of the people gone. As she does so, in his dream she also finds him, as a very old man. She says he is not supposed to die in a comfortable bed with the devil outside, to trade his true mission for creature comforts. "You must get up and fight," she says in the dream. In the operating room, he struggles to chose between his fantasy life and reality, then wakes. Scully says, "we've got to get you out of here. You've got to get up. Help me." He replies, "you help me." They hug. One week later, Mulder is at home, still wearing a head bandage, and his New York Yankees "Victory Cap." Scully arrives and Mulder informs her that Albert died last night - he had been in a coma for two weeks. Scully can't believe it because she talked with him and they prayed together. She doesn't know what to believe. She doesn't know what the truth is. Scully tells Mulder that Diana was found murdered this morning. Scully believes that Diana helped save Mulder's life - she gave Scully the book and the electronic key. Mulder says he didn't know who to trust. One thing remained the same - Scully remained his friend and told him the truth. When the world was falling apart she was his constant. "And you are mine," she replies. She kisses him on the forehead. In the final scene, we see Mulder and the boy on the beach again. Mulder is helping the boy build a huge, very detailed sand castle of the alien ship. (Note: Dating of the Biogenesis-Sixth Extinction story is difficult. In En Ami, the Smoking Man says that his operation was in "the fall." In the final scene of Sixth Extinction, Mulder references the World Series. The Yankees won the World Series on October 27, 1999 so this scene, which was one week after Scully found him in the DOD facility, probably took place shortly after October 27. It could have been late September at the very earliest. The Yankees clinched the American League East division, the first "victory" of the season, in the last week of September. The reference to Albert having been in a coma for two weeks would appear to indicate that the entire continued story line lasted slightly more than two weeks. On the other hand, Scully could have been in Africa for several weeks, with Albert rallying and relapsing. On the third hand, Scully was not absent for so long that Skinner could not cover for her absence.) Early 2000 Closure. In an opening narration, Mulder describes the bodies being uncovered from the shallow graves, one by one. Are they still dreaming the dreams of children or was their innocence taken along with their lives? We see a scene of children getting up from their graves and forming a ghostly circle, as the narration describes them waiting in the starlight to be born again at God's behest. Mulder and Scully are at the technical services room of the Sacramento police department. Scruloff was 19 when he committed his first murder, the first time he was asked to portray Santa Claus. He has admitted to 24 murders but he refuses to take blame for Amber Lynn. Her body was not found in the graves. Hard as it is, Mulder wanted one of the graves to be Samantha. Harold Piller comes to see the agents. He is a psychic who has gotten some strong "hits" from this case - about Amber Lynn. He has worked with police around the world and has seen children's bodies in previous incidents transported away from an accident scene by walk-ins. Scully doesn't want to involve Piller because Mulder is vulnerable right now. Scully goes back to Washington because she feels she can't do anymore in California. Mulder takes Piller to the grave site. Piller's son disappeared under strange circumstances, then one day he started to see visions of him. Piller believes that the walk-ins are good spirits, saving the children from some terrible fate about to happen. They transform matter into energy - starlight. But Piller senses that Scruloff's victims all died suffering. Amber Lynn wasn't here, Piller says, but he senses a connection between her and Mulder. Piller knows about Samantha - what is the connection between Samantha and Amber Lynn? Scully and an FBI expert watch a videotape of Mulder's June 16, 1989 hypnotic regression, telling the story of Samantha's disappearance. The expert doubts Mulder's story because it seems to be typical guilt fantasies. Mulder's delusion is playing into his unconscious hope that his sister is still alive. There was a huge search for Samantha in 1973. Even the Treasury Department was involved. The expert advises Scully to leave it be, because Mulder's wound may be too painful to reopen, but Scully feels she owes it to Mulder. Late at night, Mulder is watching Planet of the Apes when Piller knocks at his motel door. In a trance Piller says Mulder's mother is present and we see a ghostly image of Mrs. Mulder in the room. Piller says she wants to tell about Samantha, but then he "loses" her. They then find the words "April Base" written on a paper pad. Scully visits Mrs. Mulder's home and searches. In the wastepaper basket where pictures were burned she finds part of a document. Scully phones Mulder to tell him that the document scrap matches a document in Samantha's Treasury investigation file. It is a copy of the document signed with the initials CGBS calling off the investigation. Both agents recognize the initials as belonging to the Cigarette Smoking Man and Scully is astounded when Mulder doesn't want to press the Smoking Man on the issue. Mulder is pursuing the matter in his own way. He and Piller arrive at the decommissioned April Air Force Base, where Piller senses something. A security guard drives up and tells them to move along. Meanwhile, Scully arrives home to find the Smoking Man waiting for her. He seems not well and he mentions having had an operation. He wants her to stop looking. He admits to signing the order because he believed Samantha was dead. He didn't tell Mulder for so long because there was so much to protect before that is all gone now. He leaves, sadly. Mulder and Piller return to the base at night and climb the fence. In a residential area, Piller senses that Samantha was present. They hide as a police car drives by, then Mulder finds the name Samantha and a hand print in the cement of a sidewalk of a home. Beside it is another hand print and the name Jeffrey, a reference to Jeffrey Spender, the Smoking Man's son. Later, Scully arrives back in California. Mulder doesn't believe what the Smoking Man said because of the hand print. Scully thinks Piller was just leading Mulder along. The agents go and confront Piller -- he is the subject of a criminal investigation into the disappearance of his son and he has a history of mental problems, which he claims he has under control. He makes a compelling case that he is no different from Mulder and just wants to find his son. All three sneak back into the base and enter the house where Samantha apparently lived. It has been vacant for a long time. Piller asks them to hold hands so he can try to summon the spirits of the residents. We see ghostly visions of many people. One boy takes Mulder by the hand and leads him down the hall. Scully and Piller realize Mulder is missing and find him in another room. Mulder finds a diary that is apparently Samantha's. They read it in a restaurant. It is dated 1979, when Samantha would have been 14. It describes tests. Samantha lies and tells "them" what they want to hear because she hates them. She suspects her memories were taken by the doctors. She vaguely remembers a brother and she hopes he someday reads the diary. In the final entry she talks about running away. Outside the restaurant, Mulder looks up at the stars and says maybe the starlight really is made up of old souls, because there is nothing as ancient in the universe as starlight. Later, as Mulder sleeps, his mother appears in his room and speaks to him, but we can't hear what she says. Scully finds a 1979 police report with a description matching Samantha. They visit a hospital to read reports of a "Jane Doe" admitted. Her mental state exhibited signs of paranoia and there were marks, possibly from the tests. Mulder is convinced that the Smoking Man knew about this. The agents and Piller go to visit the emergency room nurse who signed Samantha in. Outside the house, Mulder has the feeling that this is the end of the road, that he has been brought here to learn the truth. He waits outside as Scully and Piller to go the door and talk to the woman, named Arbutus Ray. She remembers the pretty young girl. She had a vision of the girl dead, but nobody believed her, then she blinked and the vision was gone and the girl was sleeping safely. There were men who came to pick her up. One appeared to be her father and as she describes him it is clear that he was the Smoking Man. When the men went to Samantha's locked room, she had vanished. Scully turns and finds that Mulder is no longer waiting by the car. The same spirit boy, Piller's son, leads Mulder to a field where other spirit children play. The lighting of the scene looks as if they might be made of starlight. Amber Lynn is there, as is Samantha who runs up and hugs Mulder. Mulder returns to Scully and Piller. It is the end of the road and they are all dead, he says, with conviction. Piller sees so much but he refuses to see his son. They are all at a better place, Mulder says, but Piller refuses to believe. Scully asks Mulder if he is OK. He replies, "I'm fine - free," and looks up at the stars as the episode ends. (Note: Closed captioning in this episode gave the name of the killer as "Ed Truelove" while in Sein Und Zeit closed captioning gave it as "Scruloff.") Spring 2000 En Ami. In Goochland, Virginia, the McPeck family drives home in car with an eleven year old boy in back seat. Their car runs a gauntlet of people who are shouting and holding signs. The boy, Jason, has cancer and the religious beliefs of the family prevent them from seeking medical help. At night, a storm comes up, a light glows outside the window and Jason sees men in black approach out of the light. As Scully leaves her apartment she finds a newspaper outside her door - the Goochland newspaper describing Jason's miracle cure. The family claims the cure was by angels. Mulder also got an anonymous e-mail about it. Someone wants them to investigate. While Mulder checks other sources, Scully visits the family. They believe that it was God's work. Jason says the angels looked like men, told him not to be afraid and pinched him hard on the back of the neck. Scully realizes that Jason has a neck wound and possibly has a chip implanted there, just as a chip cured her own cancer. Scully returns to her car to find the Smoking Man waiting for her. He claims to have saved both Jason's and Scully's lives and left the newspaper and the e-mail. He says he is dying himself and wants to bequeath his cure to her. (He's tired of Mulder's mule headedness.) He leaves a paper on the seat as she drives off. The paper has a phone number. Scully traces the number and gets the address. Going to the building she finds high security but they send her to the third floor where she finds an office labeled "CGB Spender." The Smoking Man awaits her and tells her that as he looks at the sum of his life, most of his work is in ruins. As the darkness descends, he finds that he has no legacy. He is dying of cerebral inflammation resulting from his brain surgery and has only a few months. He is willing to give her the science that provides the miracle cure, but she has to travel with him - it will take a few days and she must not tell Mulder. She is reluctant, but her interest overcomes her and she leaves word for Mulder that she will be out of town for a few days, claiming a family emergency. She is carrying a microphone, hidden in her bra. Scully and the Smoking Man talk as they drive. He has always had a sort of affection for her and Mulder. He held her life in his hands when he cured her of cancer. The Smoking Man thinks Scully is drawn to powerful men but also keeps distant from them, which is why she would die for Mulder but won't allow herself to love him. She dismisses his comments as "pop psychology." He takes her down a dirt road, and we see that they are being followed. They arrive at a pleasant country home where a woman named Marjorie Butters lives, who the Smoking Man claims is 118 years old, although she is as vital as a much younger woman. She is gardening and greets CSM with a hug. Scully sees that Marjorie has a scar on the back of her neck - apparent evidence of the validity of the Smoking Man's claims for his science. Scully's apartment manager tells Mulder about Scully leaving with a "driver," who Mulder recognizes as the Smoking Man. Skinner and Mulder are concerned but can't find Scully. She took an FBI vehicle and her mother knows nothing about an emergency. Scully phones Skinner and says everything is OK, but she won't talk directly to Mulder. Mulder becomes convinces that she is in trouble. Scully and the Smoking Man stop for gas and she goes to the bathroom, talking on the tape to Mulder. She secretly mails the tape to Mulder but as they drive off the man following them is seen to have gotten the envelope out of the mailbox. They end up at a lake home, late at night. Scully is asleep in the car and the Smoking Man puts on gloves, brushing a lock of hair out of her face. Scully wakes up to find herself in satin pajamas. She thinks the Smoking Man drugged her but he says he just carried her in so that she would be comfortable. They are in Milford, Pennsylvania. She is upset and ready to leave, but finally decides she has to know the answers. The Lone Gunmen arrive at Mulder's apartment, in disguise. They got into Scully's apartment and found e-mails on her computer to somebody named "Cobra." Mulder and the Gunmen barge into Skinner's office carrying Scully's laptop. For the last 6 months Cobra has been e-mailing Scully from the department of defense, but she is unaware of it. Somebody has been posing as Scully to win Cobra's trust. Mulder is convinced that the Smoking Man is doing this and Scully's life is in danger. Meanwhile, the Smoking Man tells Scully that they'll be meeting their contact for dinner and provides her an evening dress. At a fancy restaurant, Smoking Man says that their contact, Cobra, is to human genetic science what the early nuclear scientists were to nuclear warfare. The Smoking Man says that if Cobra receives assurances, the science he turns over will be not just a cure for cancer but a cure for all human disease. How? From the final frontier - largely extraterrestrial. Theoretically the Smoking Man can be cured but it appears that he doesn't really want to be. He is a lonely man. The Smoking Man goes outside for a smoke. The man who has been following them approaches and points out that Cobra hasn't shown up, so they have to wait, but Scully won't stick around for ever. The Smoking Man tells him, "Just do your damn job. Cobra, however, has slipped Scully a note about where she should meet him. The Smoking Man lets her take a small motorboat to the Calico Cove inlet, down the lake. Another boat approaches hers. Cobra comments that they are finally meeting and that she is just as she described herself. He hands her a CD-ROM. She denies that they have spoken before - but he is shot and dies before they can say more. The sniper then targets Scully, but the Smoking Man kills him before he can fire at her. She returns to the lake home where the Smoking Man meets her. Because she still believes him, she gives him the CD-ROM but he gives it back. Later, Scully is at Mulder's apartment where the Lone Gunmen help examine the content of the disk. It is empty. They return to the building where Spender's office was, but it is vacant. Mulder says that the Smoking Man used Scully. Marjorie Butters was a fake. Jason has a chip in his neck but the parents probably won't let them examine him. Scully believed the Smoking Man but Mulder thinks he used her to save himself, to get the science on that disk - saving himself at the expense of the human race. Scully says that for a moment she saw something in the Smoking Man's eyes, a longing for something more than power - something he could never have. Realizing what he is doing, the Smoking Man throws the real CD into the lake, apparently dooming himself and keeping the cure for all disease from the human race. Spring 2000 Requiem. In Bellefleur, OR - a police car races down highway. Driving is Detective Miles, who fans first met in the pilot episode of The X-Files. He radios to a deputy to wait for backup, but Miles' car loses power and coasts, then strikes another police car that is stopped on the highway in the dark. The forest is glowing. The dials on Miles' watch are spinning. The deputy in the other car appears to be dead and green acid is on the ground. As Miles gets out of the car, another man with the same face as the deputy stands there, unspeaking. An auditor is in the X-Files office. Mulder and Scully have spent a huge amount on travel - by FBI standards these numbers are out of control. The auditor says that Mulder's two big issues, the conspiracy and the disappearance of his sister, have been resolved, but Mulder points out that nothing the agents have been investigating has been resolved. Acknowledging that Mulder's sister was a major motivation for Mulder, the auditor asks that given the case report saying that Samantha is dead, what is left to investigate? Scully also has to defend the investigation of the conspiracy to the auditor. The auditor tells Mulder that he is evaluating what The X-Files does, so if they go forward they can do it more responsibly. He tells Mulder that if he is going to spend so much time looking for aliens, he should narrow his search to where they are. Meanwhile, in a "hellhole" middle eastern prison, Marita Covarrubias gets Alex Krycek released. She tells him that the Smoking Man sent her to find him. The Cigarette Smoking Man is dying. Two teenagers, Gary and Richie, approach Detective Miles in the woods. They heard that there was an airplane collision with a UFO. He tells them that the Navy found their plane and there is no of another craft. Miles sends them away. As Mulder and Scully are talking in the X-Files office, Billy Miles telephones Mulder. Mulder and Scully immediately remember the name. Billy was abducted seven years earlier and Mulder and Scully investigated the case. He tells them that it is happening again, but not to him this time. the implication is that he thinks his father has been abducted. Even though the auditor would say they couldn't justify the expense, the agents head out to Oregon to investigate. Alex and Marita visit the Cigarette Smoking Man's apartment, in Washington DCC's Watergate Apartments. He is in a wheelchair, attended by a nurse, Greta, and has to smoke through a tracheotomy hole in his throat. Krycek accuses that the Smoking Man had him thrown in that prison. The Smoking Man agrees that it was for trying to sell something that was the Smoking Man's. The Smoking Man counters that they have a singular opportunity now. A crash in Oregon -- an alien ship has collided with a military aircraft. It is Roswell and Corona again, the chance to rebuild the project. Meanwhile, Richie and Gary are back in the Oregon forest at night, looking for the UFO. Gary has an incident in which he shakes violently, then disappears. Richie sees lights glowing in the forest and his flashlight bursts into flame. He runs off. Mulder and Scully arrive in Oregon. Billy has been a sheriff's deputy for three years. He got over the abductions, but other people in the area didn't and don't believe it. Billy is divorced and back living with his father. He tells about the crash. The other unidentified craft hasn't been found. His father has been no help, even though a deputy is missing. Detective Miles drives up. He claims that he has been working with the FAA and it looks like there was no second craft. As they drive to the scene, Mulder finds that the collision of the two police cars happened at the same place Mulder painted an X on the pavement seven years earlier. Scully finds an ammunition clip, likely from the missing deputy's gun, but there is no indication of what he might have been shooting at. As Mulder and Scully drive off to see the missing man's wife, Detective Miles places the evidence bag with the shells in his car trunk, and viewers see that the body of the real Detective Miles is in the trunk. A Bounty Hunter is masquerading as Miles. Mulder and Scully are surprised that the missing man's wife is Teresa Nemmen, an abduction victim who seven years ago approached the agents for help. Her husband is also an abductee, but they keep it a secret because people in the community don't understand. His experiences were more terrifying than hers. He was taken many times and tested. Teresa has medical files and as she gets them, Mulder watches Scully plays with Teresa's baby. That evening, as Mulder study the files, Scully comes to Mulder's door, uneasy but she doesn't know what is wrong. She felt dizzy and got chills. Mulder covers her up in his bed and puts an arm around her to warm her. Mulder says it's not worth it. He wants her to go home. Seeing her holding the baby shows him what has been taken away from her - including her health and the chance to be a mother. (Recall that Scully cannot have children, because of the procedures done during her abduction.) Maybe what the FBI says is true, Mulder speculates. The personal costs are too high. There is so much she needs to do in her life - so much more than this. There has to be an end. Meanwhile, Krycek is in Oregon, too. He reports by phone to the Smoking Man that in spite of lots of effort, nobody can find the UFO. He is told that it must be there, hidden in plain site. Find the deputy and you'll find the ship. Teresa is awakened in the night. Her husband, Ray, is home, but when he doesn't speak she realizes that it is not her husband. She runs upstairs and he follows. She stabs him with a knife and noxious gas comes out of his body, overcoming her. Mulder and Scully arrive at Teresa's home. Billy reports that Teresa is gone, apparently taken because the door was open. Inside they find the mark they immediately recognize as acid burns from what Scully describes as "arguably an alien." Scully feels faint again for a moment. Marita, who has stayed with the Smoking Man, asks him why bring Krycek into this matter and then play with him by feeding him incomplete information. The Smoking Man says that he has great faith that Krycek will find the ship, but if the Smoking Man tells him exactly how, Krycek will be tempted to sell the information. The ship is rebuilding itself, the Smoking Man says. What we call God is an alien intelligence. Marita states her conclusion that the aliens are coming and the Smoking Man corrects her that they are coming back. Mulder approaches Richie, who is watching the crime scene where Teresa disappeared. He claims that "they" took his friend, Gary. Billy is surprised when Richie states that Billy's father was in the woods and knows what is going on. Richie takes Mulder and Scully to where Gary disappeared. Richie claims that his flashlight beam hit a spot and bent the light. As Scully walks nearby she is lifted up in the air and shakes rapidly. Mulder realizes Scully is out of sight and finds her on the ground, groggy. She doesn't understand why this is happening to her. Mulder also doesn't know, but is sure that these aren't just random abductions and that the abductees won't be coming back this time. Billy goes to his father's home and draws his gun, confronting Detective Miles. Billy says, "I don't know who you are but you are not going to take me." His father eventually calms him and Billy gives up his gun, but we see that Detective Miles is the Bounty Hunter. Mulder and Scully walk up to the door and, finding it open, walk in. Billy and the Bounty Hunter are gone. Two days later at the FBI building in Washington, Skinner visits Mulder's office. Mulder thinks he is in trouble and says that if the higher-ups are coming down on Skinner, he is sorry. Skinner, however, has Krycek and Marita with him. They explain that they have a singular opportunity. The Cigarette Smoking Man is dying. His last wish is to rebuild the conspiracy. There is a ship in those woods, cloaked in an energy field. The alien is eliminating proof of all the abductions. This is Mulder's chance to change all that and find the proof. Krycek will cooperate because he wants to Damn the Smoking Man's soul. Scully finds them talking and joins the effort. They call the Lone Gunmen in to consult and they determine that the ship is so well cloaked that even military satellites don't detect it, but the Gunmen have detected it, because they know exactly what to look for. It's not going to be there forever, however. As they talk it is rebuilding itself. Scully can't handle it and leaves the room. Mulder follows into the hall. Mulder won't let her go back to Oregon. They're taking abductees, he points out, and Scully is an abductee. Mulder won't risk losing her. They hug and she vows that she won't let him go alone. Skinner accompanies Mulder into the Oregon woods, wondering if it is just a "snipe hunt." Scully looks at the medical records with the Lone Gunmen and realizes that all of the abductees experienced the same kind of elevated brain activity that Mulder had a few months ago. They realize that it is Mulder who is in danger, but Scully collapses. Mulder and Skinner lay out a network of laser beams to detect the energy field of the ship. Mulder walks up to the field and puts his hand into it, causing the hand to vibrate rapidly. Skinner realizes he can't see Mulder. Mulder is inside the energy field with many of the other abductees, including some that we thought were dead, like Detective Miles, the deputy, Teresa and Billy. Mulder enters a glowing circle with them and sees a ship overhead. The Bounty Hunter walks up and joins them in the circle, ready to be transported up to the UFO, which is hovering overhead. Skinner sees the ship. It departs and all of the people are gone. Krycek reports to the Smoking Man and Marita that he failed. The Smoking Man speculates that perhaps Krycek never wanted to succeed? "The hour is at hand?" the Smoking Man asks, and Krycek agrees that it is time "to send the devil back to hell." The Smoking Man's final words are, "As you do to Mulder and to me you do to all mankind." Krycek pushes the wheelchair down the stairs and the Smoking Man lies at the bottom, apparently dead. Skinner visits Scully in her hospital room. She feels ok - they're just running some tests. She already heard about Mulder's disappearance. Skinner knows that he will be asked what he saw and says he can't deny it. He vows that he won't. They are both crying. Scully says, "we will find him," and Skinner nods. "I have to," she adds. Scully tells Skinner that there is something else she has to tell him, that he must keep to himself. She can't explain or believe it, but she is pregnant. June 2000? (See date comments in "Without" listing) Within.  It is the day after Scully discovers she is pregnant. She dreams both of her baby and of Mulder (or possibly receives psychic impressions from him?).  Her visions of him are disturbing.  At work, she finds men in the X-Files office who tell her that they are looking for anything that might be pertinent for the manhunt.  She thinks a conventional search for Mulder is crazy.  She goes to Skinner -- they agree that they won't find Mulder that way. Kersh has been named Deputy Director and is now Skinner's superior.  Kersh tells Scully and Skinner that the only acceptable solution is to find Mulder safe and alive.  Scully feels she and Skinner should be directing the search.  Kersh says FBI agent John Doggett has been named the leader of the search.  Kersh warns that of anything gets out about aliens or abductions, Scully and Skinner will be fired. Skinner is called to give a statement about Mulder's disappearance. He vows to Scully that he will tell the truth, but Scully says that he won't be any good to Mulder if he gives them the power to ruin his career.  Scully sits while Sinner gives his statement.  Another agent is near her and strikes up a conversation. He claims to have known Mulder.  He always took the rumors with a grain of salt - that from the beginning Mulder never trusted Scully. She says she doesn't think he knew Mulder at all, and checks his badge -- it is Doggett.  She throws a cup of water in his face and walks out.  Later, at home, she checks Doggett's computer file, but runs to the bathroom because she has to vomit.  She calls her mom, but gets an answering machine - she leaves a message that she needs to talk, but hears sounds on the line indicating that the line is tapped. She sees someone outside watching her apartment.  She calls Doggett and tells him to keep away from her, but he appears perplexed.  She sees the shadow of someone outside her apartment door, grabs a gun and pursues, but sees no one but her landlord.  He claims he saw Mulder in her building a few moments earlier.  She runs back to her apartment and finds that her computer is gone. Scully goes to Mulder's apartment.  His computer is also gone.  His bed still has some of his clothes on it.  She lies down.  In a dream (?) we see Mulder with his face skin stretched by mechanical claws.  A drill enters his mouth and begins cutting.  The Lone Gunmen are with Skinner at a satellite dish field - they are pulling down UFO information from the Pacific Northwest, but can't determine where the UFO went.  Doggett calls on Kersh and asks if anyone else is also assigned to look for Mulder that Doggett doesn't know about.  Kersh denies it.  Scully wakes up in Mulder's bed and finds Doggett in the apartment. They verbally fence - she wants respect and he thinks she just sees him as "the big bad wolf."  He finds it hard to swallow that a scientist would accept Mulder being taken by aliens.  She tells him that she has seen things she cannot explain and as a scientist it is a badge of honor to not dismiss these things because somebody else thinks it's BS.  Doggett found car rental receipts for a series of 370-mile trips Mulder took over four weekends in May without telling anyone. As they talk, Doggett gets a call about Mulder at FBI headquarters. Skinner and Scully are called to the task force room -- somebody removed files after hours.  Skinner is questioned -- it was Mulder's pass card that was used to enter the room and Skinner was at the building until 10pm the night before.  They wonder if Skinner is helping Mulder and used Mulder's pass card. Doggett tells Scully that he believes Skinner, but finds that Mulder's credit card was used two days ago in Raleigh, NC.  Scully realizes that Raleigh is where Teena Mulder is buried, which explains the rental car trips.  Doggett has also found that the Mulder family cemetery marker is newly engraved to say "Fox Mulder 1961-2000."  Scully doesn't know what to think.  Doggett finds medical records of additional treatment Scully knew nothing about following Mulder's hospitalization a year ago for unusual brain activity.  It appears that Mulder knew that he was dying but didn't tell Scully. How far would he go for his truth, Doggett asks? His life and work were threatened and nothing was proven, unless Mulder took one last big chance.  Doggett asks if Mulder is trying to create doubt and leave a mark.  Would he stage his own disappearance? Skinner, though, knows that he saw a UFO at close range. Scully asks Doggett to not report Skinner's statement.  Doggett says he just wants help to find Mulder. Skinner and Scully go back to the Gunmen - there was lots of microburst activity in the Arizona desert meaning that is probably where the UFO took Mulder.  Scully concludes that it is the aliens removing evidence and that they are in Arizona because they are looking for Gibson Andrew Praise, who is hard proof of alien DNA.  Doggett also finds a file (slipped under his door by an unknown person) on Gibson -- they believe Gibson's file is what was stolen. The boy was last seen in Arizona and the general consensus is that to find Mulder they need to find Gibson. We see another scene of Mulder undergoing medical tests -- a medical saw cutting into his chest -- and Scully wakes up.  She is in a vehicle with Skinner in Arizona.  Satellite data shows UFO activity 100 miles north of Phoenix.  Doggett and his task force are also there, flying helicopters. An agent reports that Gibson has been found at a school for the deaf. Scully and Skinner also head for the school.  School officials pull Gibson out of class pending arrival of the FBI, and Gibson gives a meaningful look at a girl also attending the school. Doggett, Scully and Skinner all arrive at the school at the same time.  Gibson went out the window of the office where he was being held.  The task force agents spread out. Gibson walks up to a man (we don't see who it is) and Doggett soon after finds their footprints lead off into the mountains. Doggett chases and finds Mulder pulling Gibson toward a cliff......to be continued. June 2000? Without.  Scully provides an opening narration about how we live in a darkness of our own making. Who are these beings we do not understand? If they know our secrets, why can't we know theirs? We see a UFO landing, but as the narration concludes, the image of the ship dissolves. After Doggett repeatedly shouts orders, Mulder releases Gibson, who runs away. Mulder doesn't otherwise speak or react. Mulder backs away from Doggett toward the cliff. Doggett runs forward to stop him, but Mulder falls off the cliff and strikes the ground far below. In a close-up we see that Mulder almost immediately awakes with a start. Scully & Skinner drive up, but Doggett and the other the agents now present don't know where Mulder is. His body is not where it fell. Doggett can't explain it, but says cops see amazing things sometimes. A set of tracks leads down into a gully and provide clear evidence that Mulder ran away from where he fell. Scully is convinced that it may have looked like Mulder, but it wasn't. Scully has seen what looks like a man transform into another man. When pressed for details by Doggett, Scully answers that what appeared to be Mulder was an alien bounty hunter, come to collect a bounty on Gibson, because he is part alien. The Bounty Hunter wanted to take Gibson back to his ship, where she believes Mulder is. Doggett says she is starting to remind him of Mulder. The other agents gather back at the school with the children outside. Doggett drives up. Gibson cannot be found, so they search the school building. The Bounty Hunter, still looking like Mulder, is inside, but he transforms to look like the principal to talk to Doggett. Scully thinks Gibson is long gone. She and Skinner see the girl Gibson looked at earlier get on a bicycle and ride off. Scully follows on foot, having to trot to keep up. Scully finds the bicycle abandoned, and soon finds a sand-covered trapdoor. Gibson and the girl are there. He tells Scully that she shouldn't have come. Scully promises to protect him. They only reason the aliens want to take him is because he is special. The girl is the only one at the school he told. Gibson broke his leg while running away. Scully sets his leg but has to go get a car to transport him. Kersh phones Doggett. Doggett says he saw Mulder, but does not have him in custody. Kersh can't understand how Doggett could find Mulder then lose him. Doggett and Skinner talk - Skinner tells Doggett that he is a pawn in a rigged game. Doggett asks for specifics. Skinner says Doggett has a good reputation, and could even become the FBI Director some day, which is why he has been set up to fail. Skinner tells him that the only way to find Mulder is to listen to Scully and find the truth, but even then he can lose, because if Doggett puts anything about aliens in his report, Kersh will ruin him. The Bounty Hunter is inside the school, now looking like Scully, but Scully also walks up to Skinner and Doggett, who are standing outside. They are bemused to see Scully in person at the same time that an agent radios that she is inside the building. The Bounty Hunter attacks the agent indoors. The real Scully and company rush in and chase the Bounty Hunter, but they are eluded. Doggett can't deny that he saw two Scullys. Scully realizes that the Bounty Hunter is masquerading again, as someone in the room. The deaf girl knows which it is, but slips away and does not tell anyone. As Gibson sleeps in his underground hiding place, he has a vision of Mulder, still in the alien's medical examination restraints. An ambulance arrives to transport the injured agent. Scully wants to sneak away in a vehicle to get Gibson, but Skinner intercepts her. They soon end up with guns pulled on each other because they each suspect the other of being a shape changer. Skinner exhibits trust first and lowers his weapon. When he reveals that he knows Scully is pregnant, they know they can trust each other. Scully can't take the chance that she will never see Mulder again. She has to do whatever it takes. She tells Skinner that she knows where Gibson is, and Skinner accompanies her. The deaf girl (or is it the Bounty Hunter?) has observed their conversation. When they get to Gibson's hiding place, he is not there. They find him several yards away. He says he can "hear" Mulder, somewhere out there. "You're so close now," he tells Scully. Skinner carries Gibson to the vehicle but Scully remains behind. Skinner delivers Gibson to a hospital. Later, in his room with Skinner watching over him, Gibson wakes up. The deaf girl enters the room and shuts the door. Meanwhile, Scully walks the desert in the night, calling for Mulder. She sees the lights of what seems to be a UFO flying in the distance. It illuminates her, but it is a helicopter. It lands and Doggett gets out. She accuses him of following her, but he responds that she is where the action is. Doggett knows that Skinner took Gibson to the hospital. Doggett's men followed Skinner to the hospital. Scully is concerned that the Bounty Hunter may have infiltrated Doggett's men? They get into the helicopter and fly to the hospital. Unseen by them, there is a cloaked UFO nearby. Mulder is inside and senses Scully's nearness. Scully arrives at the hospital. Doggett is now ready to question his own security. Doggett and Scully go to Gibson's room and Gibson is gone. Scully runs out and quickly begins a search. Still in the room, Doggett realizes that the only way they could have gotten past the security is to crawl through the suspended ceiling. Above the ceiling they find Skinner, unconscious. Down the hall, the Bounty Hunter, posing as Skinner, flags Scully down. She is again suspicious, but the Bounty Hunter attacks Scully. She ends up shooting him. Green blood fizzes out and the body quickly dissolves. Doggett bursts in and Scully cries as Gibson looks on. Back in Washington, Kersh reviews the pictures of the injured Skinner and the green slime. There must have been hazardous chemicals that caused the body to dissolve, Kersh muses. Kersh belittles many of the facts of Doggett's report but Doggett counters that the report reads like an X-File. Doggett accuses that it's what Kersh intended when he assigned Doggett to he case. Kersh says he assigned Doggett to give him some answers and that Doggett should not come back until he has those answers. Doggett visits Scully in her hospital room. She doubts that he believes her, but he provides her several bits of information on case. Gibson is a ward of the state and Doggett has asked for special protection. Doggett tells Scully that keeping her apprised of the case is his job now - he is assigned to the X-Files. Scully is surprised. Doggett promises that no mater what their differences, he will find Mulder. In the final scene, we see Mulder, still in the alien medical facility, surrounded by Bounty Hunters in the nearby darkness. (Note: The date of June 2000 for Requiem, Within and Without is based on the events of the three episodes having taken place not long after Mulder's rental car trips during four weekends in May, as noted in Within. Note that the first of these four road trips may have been to Pennsylvania instead of North Carolina, as reported in The Gift.) February 2001? This IS Not Happening.  Near Helena, Montana, a UFO zooms over a deserted rural area. A young man in a car is pursuing, taking photographs with one hand and dictating into a pocket recorder as he goes. It is Richie, who Mulder and Scully met in Bellefleur, OR, in the episode Requiem. The UFO hovers and Richie stops his car and gets out. He runs to the top of a hill, saying "This is not happening" to himself, and finds that the UFO has disappeared, but he sees someone walking nearby. Running after the man, Richie trips and finds a body on the ground. Scully arrives at the X-Files office -- Doggett has called her in and takes her to Skinner's office. Teresa Hoese, formerly Nemmen, has been found. She was abducted just before Mulder and is now in a Montana hospital, just hanging on to life. Scully, Doggett and Skinner fly to Helena and rush to the hospital. The doctor says she has been severely mistreated. It is as if someone was experimenting on her. In addition to many other injuries, there are marks on her face as if the skin had been pierced and stretched. Police deliver their report to Doggett, after which the three FBI agents go to see Richie. He is in Montana looking for his friend, Gary, who was also abducted. Internet chat rooms have told him that there has been a lot of UFO activity nearby over the last couple of weeks. He claims to have seen someone with Teresa and police evidence also found footprints -- of Nikes. Doggett pressures Richie, asking if he thinks aliens wear Nikes. Richie responds that it it wasn't an alien, what about his spaceship? Doggett is disgusted. Scully sees it as their first break in the search for Mulder. Doggett tells Scully that he thinks she is also afraid to find Mulder, because of what might have happened to him. Scully wakes from a bad dream about Mulder being experimented on. She goes to Skinner's room and they talk outside the motel. Scully relates a conversation with Mulder about starlight and about how the light we see may be millions of years old. Mulder thought that souls dwell in starlight and she hopes he's right. Skinner says it sounds like she is trying to prepare herself, but encourages her to stop -- Mulder may be fine. Jeremiah Smith, first seen in the episode Talitha Cumi, enters the hospital and morphs to look like Teresa's doctor. He tells a nurse to prepare Teresa to be transferred to another facility. He is wearing Nikes. Scully's phone wakes her up with the news that Teresa is gone and the doctor denies having transferred her. Skinner and Scully drive up to the open field where Teresa was found. Doggett has called them to meet him there. He introduces Monica Reyes, an FBI agent from the New Orleans office who specializes in ritualistic crime. Doggett asked her to help with the case. She suspects that the abductions may be the work of a UFO cult, similar to Heaven's Gate, an opinion which rubs Scully the wrong way. Doggett follows and tells Scully that if she is going to contend that there is an alien bounty hunter involved, they have to part company. "Enjoy your new company," Scully says. A man later identified as Absalom enters a rustic rural building. Jeremiah is in the building with Teresa. He is using the alien power to heal wounds on her. Absalom cries with joy while Jeremiah is performing the healing. They were almost too late, he observes. Scully finds Reyes at the hospital, looking at Teresa's x-rays. She says she is looking for evidence of implants. Scully doesn't understand. Reyes says she still believes that this is the work of a cult, but that she doesn't disbelieve the reports of alien abductions, and implants are often reported in such cases. She has worked on many cases of satanic ritualistic crimes, but never found direct evidence is Satan. ("We should talk," quips Scully.) Reyes believes that there are energies in the universe that she is sensitive to. She can sense Scully's fear. Later, Reyes is driving down a rural highway, sees a UFO and follows it. It has left another person behind. Jeremiah and Absalom are loading the body into a pickup truck when Reyes runs over a nearby hill, calling that she is a federal agent. The two men drive off before she can approach them. In the grass nearby Reyes finds a second body -- it is Richie's friend, Gary. Scully does an autopsy on Gary. He has all of the same kinds of injuries Teresa did. Scully is more scared than ever for Mulder. Doggett and Reyes talk in the hall. When they worked together before, she helped during a three-day search for Doggett's son. She knows that Scully fears finding what Reyes and Doggett did find, i.e. Doggett's dead son. She understands that this is why Doggett is so determined to find Mulder. Reyes recognized Absalom in the field. He was a doomsday cultist who believed that an alien invasion would begin at the start of the Millennium. When that didn't happen, he got involved in credit card fraud, and other activities. Reyes also saw the license number of the pickup and traced it to a place about an hour drive away. Absalom's people are eating outdoors, around a campfire. Jeremiah comes up and says "they are coming" and "you can't let them find him." The compound is soon raided by law enforcement, including Scully, Doggett, Skinner and Reyes. There are dozens of people there, many sleeping in rough dormitory buildings. In one, Scully finds Teresa, alive and well. They question Absalom who is evasive. He now thinks that the alien invasion really did begin with the new millennium, but just not the way he expected. There are video cameras all over the compound, which he claims are to give the abductees a feeling of safety -- so they can see if the aliens return for them. Scully shows him a picture of Mulder, but Absalom shakes his head, no. In her motel room, Scully sees a vision of Mulder standing before her, but when she looks away for a moment, he is no longer there. Reyes has reviewed the tapes and shows scenes to the others. On one, Scully recognizes Jeremiah, who she recalls Mulder believed had the power to heal. They see him morph on the video tape, changing to look like Doggett, although Doggett was never in that building. The agents return to the compound, where riot troops are still in control. Scully asks for Jeremiah. Picking out one likely suspect from a crowd, she questions him privately. He morphs and really is Jeremiah. He says that he saves abductees and he was trying to help Mulder, too. Skinner comes in. "You'd better come with us," he says. They have found Mulder, wrapped in a blanket, on the ground a distance away from the compound. Scully rushes up, frantic to help him, but Doggett holds her back, saying that it is too late. Knowing that Jeremiah has the power to heal, she turns and runs through the dark back to the compound, but finds a UFO hovering over the main building, a light beaming down into it. She enters the shaking building; there are many of the abductees still inside. When the light goes out, Scully discovers that Jeremiah is gone. She sinks to her knees, crying, and moaning, "this is not happening." To be continued in April. February and May 2001? Deadalive.   A graveside service is held for Fox Mulder in Raleigh, North Carolina. Doggett, the Gunmen, Skinner, and Maggie and Dana Scully are among those gathered. The pastor recites the Bible verse, "Whosoever believeth in me shall never die." Scully murmurs to Skinner how everyone else on Mulder's family is now gone, but the truth he worked so hard to find was never truly revealed to him. She can't believe she is really standing there. Scully crumbles a handful of dirt into the grave. Three months later...Doggett and Skinner meet with Kersh. He is commending them, citing their efforts in the recovery of Mulder. Kersh has asked Skinner to also write a letter transferring Doggett off the X-Files and Doggett is being considered for promotion. Doggett thanks Kersh, but says he'd like to give the transfer some thought. In The X-Files office, Doggett and Scully talk. Her pregnancy is showing. Skinner told Scully about the meeting the Kersh. Scully tries to convince Doggett that it would be crazy to stay. He counters that in six weeks, Scully goes on maternity leave. If Doggett is transferred out, the X-Files office door will be locked, maybe forever. Doggett still has lots of questions about the Mulder disappearance and considers it an open case. Scully tells him to get out when he can or he may never get out. On a fishing trawler in a storm 50 miles off Cape Fear, North Carolina, the crew finds a human body in their nets. Later, at the morgue, the medical examiner begins the autopsy but he body, which has clearly long been in the water, begins to move. Doggett gets a call at home, from Skinner. The body found in the ocean is Billy Miles and he is alive, in Wilmington, NC. Skinner and Doggett drive to the cemetery where Mulder is buried. Skinner is determined to open Mulder's grave but Doggett thinks it's crazy. Skinner feels that if Billy appeared to be dead but is now alive, Mulder may also really be alive, even after three months. Skinner has the casket taken to the same medical examiner who helped revive Billy. Although a local coroner attempts to intervene, they open the casket and find Mulder, his body showing signs of decay. Scully rushes up to Skinner at the US Naval Hospital at Annapolis, MD. She demands to know if what she has heard is true. Mulder is alive, clinically, but his body and brain are all in a state of decomposition. Doggett urges her not to see Mulder, but she does, entering the room alone. She feels his chest to feel him breathe, and puts her head to his chest, crying. Back at FBI headquarters, Doggett is called into Kersh's office at night. Kersh has been in that office for six months and hasn't yet seen a sunrise from it. Kersh got a call about Mulder - he wants Doggett to drop the investigation. It's bad for the FBI. At the hospital, Scully looks in on Billy Miles, who has a brief convulsion while she is there. Scully has to explain to a nurse - she was just looking for an indication that Billy might be getting better, but she thinks the equipment may have malfunctioned, because for a moment there appeared to be two heartbeats. At the FBI, Skinner isn't well. He staggers while walking down a hall, holding his chest. It is certainly the nanobots Alex Krycek implanted in Skinner's system months earlier. Making his way to an elevator, he finds Krycek. Skinner tells him to go to hell, but Krycek sends him another attack and Skinner returns to ask what Krycek wants. They go to the X-Files office. Krycek wants to give Skinner a chance to save Mulder's life but Skinner isn't sure it can be saved. Krycek tells Skinner that he has a vaccine developed by Mulder's father to fight the alien virus. In the hospital, Billy regains consciousness, his body still decayed from weeks in the water. He gets out of bed and showers. The dead skin washes off his body. Doggett comes to Mulder's room. Scully is sitting there, holding Mulder's hand. Doggett has concerns about Scully's well being. Scully says that after her initial reaction to Doggett, he changed her opinion about him. She is thankful to know about him, and thankful for his concern, but that he was wrong to feel that the grave should not be opened. This is not because of her personal feelings, but because he is assigned to The X-Files. The truth about what caused this is what matters. A nurse enters and asks Scully to come - it is Billy Miles, standing in the hallway, naked and disoriented. Billy's body looks healthy. He doesn't remember much when Scully gently questions him. He remembers the water and being on the spacecraft. They took so many people this time, but now he understands, he says. "They're here to save us." Doggett walks off and Scully follows. She accuses that he doesn't believe the evidence of his eyes. He says he isn't ready to accept a load of crap but Scully says he's just bull-headed. He asks if Scully believes the story about aliens coming to save the world, a question she doesn't answer. Later, Scully and Skinner talk. He came down after hearing about Billy. Scully reports that there isn't a piece of medical data on Billy that isn't 100% normal. It doesn't make sense, but it's like Billy literally became a new person. Skinner asks if it could be due to an alien influence, such as a virus. Scully demands to know what Skinner knows. He says there may be a vaccine, but it doesn't come without a price. At a corrections facility in Perkey, West Virginia, Doggett talks with Absalom. Doggett wants to know about the people he finds left for dead. Absalom quotes scripture but Doggett wants to know how he healed the people. Skinner goes to Mulder's room and finds Krycek there. Krycek says to get the vaccine, Skinner will have to make sure Scully's pregnancy doesn't come to term. Skinner is shocked and refuses. Krycek says we all have lives in our hands - the question is who is willing to sacrifice. Doggett returns and sees Krycek, making him suspicious. Doggett talks with Scully, who tells him that she believes that Mulder is infected by a virus that keeps him just alive enough to transform him into an alien. Absalom also told Doggett that the abductees, if not cured, would be resurrected as aliens as part of the plot to take over the world. The double heartbeat Scully heard in Billy maybe be evidence for this. Scully is on her way to a surgical bay - Mulder's body has to be stabilized in order to administer the vaccine she has asked Skinner to get her. Doggett searches out Skinner, who is in Mulder's room disconnecting Mulder from the equipment, apparently an attempt to kill Mulder. Skinner couldn't kill Scully's baby in order to get the vaccine. Doggett wants to know where Krycek is and finds him in a car in the parking garage. Krycek tries to run Doggett down and Doggett grabs him through the car window as the car careens through the garage, but Doggett is finally thrown free. Krycek, however, stops, backs up and gets out of the car, holding up the vial containing the vaccine. As Doggett approaches him, Krycek drops the vial, allowing it to break on the floor, then drives off before Doggett can get to him Doggett storms back into the hospital. He doesn't have the vaccine. Doggett tells Skinner he was right - Krycek wasn't to be trusted. Scully is in the operating room with Mulder when Doggett enters. Scully has realized that by keeping Mulder on life support they were helping the virus incubate. When Skinner took him off the equipment, Mulder's temperature dropped but his vital signs were unchanged. Maybe they can give him courses of antiviral drugs to help him. Doggett is called to Kersh's office again. It's going to be awful crowded down in that X-Files office, Kersh says, meaning that the promotion is no longer available to Doggett. At the hospital, Mulder wakes up. Seeing Scully holding his hand and crying tears of joy, he jokingly asks "Who are you?". Then he asks, "Anybody miss me?" Doggett looks in, but when he sees what is happening he withdraws. May 2001? Three Words.   A man, later identified as Howard Salt, walks along the iron fence along the street outside the White House. He puts on gloves and climbs the fence, running toward the building. Secret Service agents intercept him as he calls out "He needs to know," and "Aliens are taking over the United States, he needs to know." Salt pulls a gun out of his belt, and as the agents wrestle for control of the arm, the gun fires into Salt's abdomen. As Salt passes out, he hands a CD-ROM to an agent, asking him to give it to the President. On the CD-ROM is written, "Fight the Future." Mulder is in his hospital room, gently touching the wounds on his face and remembering what was done to him during his abduction. Scully and a doctor enter. They have important news. In addition to Mulder's incredible recovery, Mulder's terminal disease is no longer detectible. The virus is gone, after the treatment with antiviral drugs and blood transfusions. The scars on his face and body are repairing themselves. He is in perfect health. Mulder says he feels like Austin Powers. Later, Scully takes Mulder home to his apartment. He looks around and notices that one of his fish is missing. Scully tells Mulder he can't understand what it was like -- learning of his abduction, searching for him, finding him dead and now having him back. Her prayers have been answered. Mulder says that her pregnancy is also an answer to her prayers, and he is happy for her. He, however, has no idea where he fits in now. He is having trouble processing what has happened to him. At the federal prison in Perkey, WV, a trustee is circulating library books to prisoners in a common area. He has the new Harry Potter book. He hands Absalom a book, "The Coming Apocalypse." Inside the front cover is a newspaper clipping about a census worker shot on the White House lawn. Deputy Director Kersh is watching a TV report about the census worker when Doggett and Skinner enter his office. People are so rarely what they seem, comments Kersh. Scully has submitted an application to reinstate Mulder on The X-Files. Kersh intends to deny the application. The success rate on the X-Files since Doggett was assigned is much higher than during the time when Scully and Mulder worked together, he says. The FBI is no place for a personal crusade, Kersh says, and directs Doggett to tell Mulder that he will not be reinstated. Kersh says the alternative is closing the X-Files completely. Skinner and Scully actually tell Mulder about Kersh's decision. Mulder thinks it's something that was set up eight years earlier. For the first time, Mulder is told that Scully has had a partner for the last several months. Doggett doesn't know much about the paranormal, but Scully says he is above reproach and is also being maneuvered. Mulder intends to go back to work anyway. In Bassett County, WV, a prison work crew, including Absalom, is working on a road. In the dirt, Absalom finds a board with a nail sticking out and slips it into the sleeve of his orange jumpsuit. As the prisoners are loaded into a van, he uses the board to strike a guard and runs. He is pursued, but he eludes the guards by running in front of a passing train, which blocks pursuit. Later, Doggett returns home to find Absalom waiting for him. Absalom grabs Doggett's gun and holds it on him. Doggett is ordered to put his hands behind him and lean forward so Absalom can check the back of his neck. He has to make sure that Doggett is still Doggett, he says. Doggett is shown the newspaper clipping. Absalom claims "they" killed Salt for what he knew, just as Absalom's life is threatened. He vows to show Doggett after which Doggett will spread the word. The invasion has begun. They are already here. As Absalom utters Biblical phrases, the phone rings but Doggett is not allowed to answer. It is Scully calling. She is with Skinner in a briefing about Absalom's escape. The words "Fight the Future" were found on the wall of Absalom's cell. The agents in the room are skeptical about reports that Absalom made claims about alien abduction, healing and alien invasion. Skinner stresses that while the claims are not substantiated, neither have they been refuted. The evidence of torture was real. Skinner tells Scully that this is obviously an X-File and he wants Doggett to be running it. Scully answers that she is "all over it." As they talk, Scully's cell phone pager beeps with a message from Mulder, "Where is everybody, come on down." They find Mulder in his office, feet up on his desk. By being there, he could be endangering the X-Files, but he brushes off such warnings. Mulder already knows about Absalom and has noticed that Salt is seen in a photograph taken of people at Absalom's compound. Mulder doesn't know any more than that, but has a big hunch. Salt, he says, was a multiple abductee, was trying to get word to the President and was killed for what he knew. Scully and Mulder visit the FBI evidence room. Mulder locates Howard Salt's personal effects, including Salt's laptop. The entire hard drive is taken up with a ten gigabyte encrypted file. He removes the hard drive and they leave the evidence room. Absalom and Doggett arrive at the Federal Statistics Center in Crystal City, VA. Absalom has taped a gun to Doggett's back so that it would fire into Doggett's skull. Absalom has his hand on the gun. Doggett's FBI credentials get them through the guard post, but a hidden x-ray locates the gun. Absalom wants access to the place they compile the data from the current census. He thinks there's proof in the census data that the aliens are already among us. As the two are about to enter the computer room, guards appear with guns. Doggett calls to them to back off and lower their weapons, but one guard shoots Absalom through the forehead, killing him instantly. Doggett is in Skinner's office. Skinner asks about Absalom's claim that the census records contain proof. Mulder enters and Skinner has to hold him back from roughing up Doggett. Mulder thinks Doggett is busy burying the truth. He got Absalom killed for what he knew. Later, Frohike greets Mulder at the door to Scully's apartment. It's not fair, Frohike says, that Mulder has been dead for six months and still looks better than Frohike. Byers and Langly are also happy to see him, although Langly implies that Mulder may have been involved in a "certain blessed event." The Gunmen were able to partially decrypt the file on Salt's hard drive. The data was downloaded from the Federal Statistics Center (FSC) the day Salt died. Fifteen minutes after Salt was shot, firewalls went up on the databanks of the FSC. Mulder thinks that means he's right and that they would kill to protect what is in the files. Unless Mulder can find a password, there is no way to get into the data. What is on the hard drive is apparently just a directory structure. Scully has gotten the Gunmen to try to convince Mulder to let this one go, but Mulder remarks that this is America - just because you get more votes doesn't mean you win. Doggett approaches his friend, Rorer as Rorer is jogging. rorer compliments Doggett for dodging a bullet. Doggett wants to know if he is being used. Rorer can't tell him that, but he can tell him three words. Later, Doggett stops Scully outside her apartment building. He can't go upstairs because Mulder doesn't trust him. Doggett tells her that Salt had a computer diskette that he was trying to get to the President, according to Doggett's source. The password for the data is "fight the future." Scully goes inside, where Mulder is waiting. She hesitates, but tells him of Doggett's information. Someone knocks on Doggett's door - it is Skinner. Scully called, beside herself. Mulder somehow got access to a password to a federal database filled with names of people of a certain genetic profile being tracked using the US Census. Doggett confesses that he gave Scully the password, but now he doesn't know which side he is helping. He declined to tell Skinner more. At the FSC, Scully is parked outside in a car when Doggett knocks on her window. Mulder wouldn't listen to her. Doggett tells her to leave. She thinks she can't do that to Mulder, but Doggett tells her to do it for herself. He thinks he may have set Mulder up. Doggett runs into the FSC. Mulder and the Gunmen are inside, working to penetrate the FSC security. With the Gunmen's help, Mulder gets inside without the security guards noticing. Doggett finds the guard's office empty. Mulder arrives at the computer room and the Gunmen remotely open the locks. He uses a workstation to access the data and prepares to e-mail the data. Doggett pounds on the door, which is now locked again, calling that Mulder's life is in danger and to get out of the room. Mulder ignores him. Doggett fires his gun through the glass door, jumps through the door and again warns Mulder of the danger. Mulder thinks Doggett is trying to protect the data, which Mulder says proves that aliens are targeting certain people based on their genetic profile for abduction and replacement by alien facsimiles. He begins to send a copy to the Washington Post. Guards drive up in military vehicles. Scully sees them arrive and uses her cell phone to warn the Gunmen that Mulder has to get out. Mulder again thinks Doggett has set him up, but Doggett says they've both been set up and they will both be killed. Langly radios to Mulder that the data has been trapped and can't be uploaded for transmission. Byers has a long shot idea for how they can get out. The guards storm into the computer room and Doggett and Mulder are not there. They are hiding above the suspended ceiling. Rorer is jogging again. As he stops at a drinking fountain, Doggett approaches him. Why shouldn't Doggett expose Rorer? Skinner is walking toward them across the park. If Rorer walks, Skinner will see to it that Rorer's name goes in lights. Rorer asks if Doggett exposes him, where will he get his answers? Doggett is standing on the tip of an iceberg, he says. It's not about Mulder, Rorer says, it's about the truth. Doggett has it all right in front of him in the X-Files. Rorer says he is just trying to point Doggett in the right direction. As Doggett walks away, we see that Rorer has a lump on the back of his neck. May 2001 Essence.   The episode begins with a narration by Mulder about the miracle of life – or is it just nostalgia for something commandeered by science. How did this child come to be? Is it a miracle or a product of technology? Scully's mother, Maggie, is helping decorate Scully's apartment for a baby shower. Lizzy Gill arrives, a baby nurse Maggie has asked to help Scully. While the shower is going on, Lizzy replaces the pills in Scully's prescription bottle. At Zeus Genetics, Dr. Lev is working late when Billy Miles enters. He's there to verify that Dr. Lev's work has been fruitful. It has, but his work is done. Billy kills Dr. Lev, dousing the body with a chemical and setting it on fire. Doggett is cleaning his gun on a Saturday morning when Mulder comes to his door. The Zeus Genetics building has burned and Mulder wants to be involved because it's the place where Scully thought they were creating alien babies. The two visit the FBI evidence analysis facility which is sifting through the debris from Zeus. Doggett's friend, Gene, resents that it was Mulder who initiated the search. All of the Zeus staff is accounted for but Dr. Lev. Lev's co-founder of Zeus Genetics was Dr. Parenti, who was Scully's obstetrician for the first two-thirds of her pregnancy. Mulder and Doggett go to question Parenti. They gain access to the office, believing that nobody is there. Parenti actually is there, meeting with a patient. In Parenti's office Doggett finds many glass containers with preserved fetuses. Parenti says they are babies with birth defects. Scully takes her prescription pills as Lizzy is about to leave. Outside, Lizzy is picked up to Duffy Haskel. She tells him that Scully trusts her and Haskel replies, "Good, we're almost at an end." Dr. Parenti is packing the things in his office when Billy enters. When Mulder and Doggett arrive to further question Parenti, they find the doctor's head in one of the glass canisters. Mulder finds Billy in the office, who tosses Mulder through a glass panel. Doggett fires his gun at Billy's chest, but Billy keeps coming. Doggett ducks into an office, and when he looks out again, Billy has disappeared. Doggett and Mulder go to Scully's apartment, where she cleans a cut over Mulder's eyebrow. Mulder thinks Billy is an alien "human replacement." Doggett counters that Billy bled red blood when he was shot, and the X-Files show that aliens bleed green. Mulder speculates that Billy is something new. Lizzy arrives while they are talking and from another room calls Haskel to report that there is trouble – that the agents are asking all the right questions. While on the phone, Haskel is attacked by Billy. Doggett arrives at the crime scene where Haskel's head has been found, severed from his body. Skinner and Mulder are there, too. Skinner says the building has been determined to be an illegal medical facility for the purpose of human cloning and that prenatal records indicate that Lev and Parenti were monitoring Scully's pregnancy. Skinner asks Mulder about the fatherhood of Scully's baby. Mulder has no idea and Skinner stresses that he needs answers. Mulder phones Scully, who has to leave the shower to answer. She catches Lizzy substituting more prescription pills. Scully is checked out at the hospital, and everything is fine. The replacement pills were just vitamin supplements. Skinner, Mulder and Doggett gather at Skinner's office to question Lizzy, who says that for ten years she has been a scientist working on a secret human cloning project. They were funded with government money from men who are all dead now. They were successful with a clone combining human and alien DNA. The babies only survived a couple of days, but they provided tissue and stem cells for other work, which Lizzy claims to have no knowledge of. Lizzy says Scully's child is very special – a perfect human child with no human frailties. Mulder storms out. Doggett's friend, Gene, tells Doggett that Billy has called in from Dr. Parenti's office, offering to give himself up. Doggett takes a SWAT team to Parenti's office, but Billy is not there. Mulder arrives at Scully's apartment and tells her to pack a bag quickly because she is in danger. He is going to do everything he can to protect her baby, but he can't do that at her apartment. Doggett phones to report that Billy is not where he said he would be. The lights go out in Scully's apartment and Mulder and Scully run. As they head down the hall, Billy approaches from the other end of the hall. Scully's car is blocked in by two other cars. As Billy approaches, he is struck by another car, driven by Krycek. Although Krycek's car completely passed over Billy's body, Billy is recovering rapidly. Krycek calls out that they don't have much time and in a split second, Mulder and Scully decide to go with Krycek. They all gather again in Skinner's office. Krycek says that there are others just like Billy and that they are virtually unstoppable. They are working to end the resistance to the alien's return to the planet. Why do they want Scully's baby? They are afraid of it, because they realize that it could be greater than them. Krycek asked Skinner to kill Scully's baby (a few episodes ago) because he wanted to destroy the truth. Mulder leaps to the conclusion that this truth is that there is a higher power, a God. Krycek says that there is no hospital that is safe enough for Scully. Doggett calls in help, including agent Monica Reyes, who is on her way to the airport in a taxi. She diverts to the FBI building. Doggett waits for her in the parking garage and phones to Skinner and Mulder to bring Scully down when he sees Reyes' taxi pull up. As Reyes drives up, however, Billy is seen in the parking garage and Doggett tells Skinner and Mulder to take Scully back up in the elevator. Billy heads up the stairs. Skinner and Mulder leave Scully with Krycek and head out to intercept Billy. Krycek gets her to the garage and Reyes drives off with Scully, slowly negotiating the curves of the parking garage. Gene stops them at the parking garage exit to the street. On the roof of the building, Skinner encounters Billy. Mulder runs up and knocks Billy over the edge of the building. Billy falls into a garbage truck, several stories below. Gene waives Reyes on and she drives off with Scully. Viewers see that Gene has a bump on the back of his neck. Late May 2001 Existence.   Billy Miles' remains are brought into a medical examiner's lab. The body was crushed after falling into a garbage truck. In the pulverized remains, the doctor finds what appears to be a metallic vertebra. He leaves it on the counter when he leaves the room. The piece of metal spins of its own accord. Each time it spins, it multiplies itself, as if creating a new backbone - apparently Billy's body is rebuilding itself out of almost nothing. Scully is riding in a car drives by Reyes. They are in Georgia, where they hope Billy cannot find them. Reyes is concerned that she has never delivered a baby and there will not be facilities where they are going. At FBI headquarters, Mulder and Doggett are with Skinner and Krycek in Skinner's office. Video from a surveillance camera shows Billy Miles leaving the morgue. Doggett doesn't believe it is possible. Krycek can't explain it, but says Billy is somehow a human replacement - some new kind of alien, created to aid in the repopulation of the planet. The aliens think Scully's baby is a threat to their plans. Agent Crane gives Doggett the message that Knowle Rorer wants to talk to Doggett. They meet and Rorer tells Doggett that both Billy and Scully's baby are products of a cold war effort to create a super soldier. Scully's abduction was by the military, and the chip in the back of her neck was used to make her pregnant with the first organic version of the super soldier. Rorer Rorer wants to stop Billy before he can get to Scully. Scully and Reyes arrive at Democrat Hot Springs, an abandoned community in Georgia where Doggett was born. It used to be a popular spot among the rich. Only Doggett knows where they are. It is night and the rooms are dark and dirty. They begin making plans for Scully's labor. Outside, Reyes sees some kind of bluish light in the distance. Billy shows up in the FBI building causing Krycek and Skinner to run. Skinner barely escapes Billy by jumping into an elevator and Krycek, already in the elevator, does not lift a hand to help Skinner. Skinner is seriously wounded. Mulder is with Skinner in the hospital when Doggett arrives. Doggett tells Mulder about his conversation with Rorer, making clear that Doggett doesn't trust Rorer. Mulder doesn't want Doggett to tell anyone where Scully is - not even Mulder. Doggett is wondering whether the fact that he knows where Scully is will catch up with him. Mulder points out that Rorer didn't say HOW they intend to stop Billy. Reyes has the house cleaned up and arranged for the labor, impressing Scully. Reyes talks about needing mood music, suggesting whale songs, reminding Scully of her sister, Melissa. Reyes sees someone outside. It turns out to be a female park ranger. The ranger is skeptical of the claims that she is talking to two federal agents hiding from a very dangerous man, but she eventually gives them the benefit of the doubt and volunteers her first aid kit, and to go get further supplies. Scully asks Reyes if she is feeling any "vibrations." She says something feels "off," but she can't identify it. Reyes goes outside to get water from a pump well. The glowing blue light is still there in the distance. Billy appears out of the dark and attacks her but the park ranger, who has just returned, shoots Billy, saving Reyes. Scully comes outside to see what is happening, but feels her first contraction. Her labor is beginning. In the FBI parking garage, Mulder and Doggett see Rorer in a car with Krycek. Doggett follows Rorer when Rorer leaves the car and Mulder watches Krycek. Doggett sees Rorer talking with Agent Crane outside Deputy Director Kersh's office. Doggett slips downstairs to Skinner's office - Skinner is there, even though it is at night. He just got out of the hospital. Doggett phones Mulder to tell him that Rorer is talking with Crane - Crane must be the one getting people past FBI security and feeding information to Billy. Crane, Rorer and Krycek must all be in league. Doggett calls Reyes from a phone inside the FBI, and Crane must have tapped the call. They know where Scully is, Mulder concludes. Mulder says he has to get to Scully and protect her. Doggett relents and directs Mulder to Democrat Hot Springs in Northern Georgia. Mulder tells Doggett that Rorer and Crane may also be human replacements and that he and Skinner are in danger. Krycek interrupts the call by smashing the window of Mulder's car. He is holding a gun on Mulder and indicates that he plans to kill Mulder. Krycek says they have been on the same side all along and could have killed Mulder many times, but he hoped Mulder would win somehow. As Krycek begins the pull the trigger, Skinner, who has entered the parking garage unobserved, shoots Krycek. When Krycek continues to reach for the gun that has fallen out of his hand, Skinner shoots him twice more, the last time in the forehead. Krycek's last words are that it would take more bullets than Skinner can ever fire to win this game. Mulder still needs the exact location of Democrat Hot Springs from Doggett. Skinner sends Mulder off to find Scully, saying that he will "get it." Upstairs, Doggett encounters Rorer and Crane, running to escape them. He runs downstairs, Crane chasing him. Doggett bursts out into the parking garage, encountering Skinner who turns and runs with him. They jump into Skinner's Blazer. Crane and Rorer run into the garage. Crane runs for the truck while Rorer runs for his own vehicle. Crane jumps on top of Skinner's car and beats in a window, grabbing at Doggett's throat. Skinner ends up driving past a roof support pillar, knocking Crane off the truck. Crane begins to get up, but Rorer drives through, his car bouncing right over Crane. The car bounces into another support pillar and explodes in flame. Scully is in labor. The park ranger is helping more than Reyes, but Reyes notices a lump on the back of the ranger's neck. Reyes chooses her moment and smashes the ranger over the head with a pot in which they have been boiling water. Several other cars drive up and the ranger, now with facial burns, says, "This baby will be born." Reyes sees Billy getting up from the ground. Scully is in great distress. Billy and the others have all entered the room and are watching the labor. As she screams with pain, Scully is also screaming to not let them take her baby. The baby is born. Billy and the others leave. Outside, Mulder is approaching in a helicopter. He lands as the cars are driving off and Reyes summons him to the building where Scully is. Scully is OK, but she needs to get to a hospital, Reyes says. Doggett and Reyes are in Kersh's office. He is expressing skepticism about their report. Who even assigned Reyes to the X-Files, anyway? Doggett answers that he assigned her because he is investigating Kersh's office for a late night meeting between Kersh, Rorer and Crane, both of whom are missing and presumed dead. Kersh is left without anything to say. Doggett and Reyes leave. Mulder arrives at Scully's apartment. The Lone Gunmen are there, delivering presents. They don't understand how Mulder arrived in time to save Scully. Doggett told them that Doggett never reached Mulder with specific directions. Mulder says, "there was a light, I followed it." The Gunmen leave. Scully shows Mulder her son - he is perfectly normal. She has named him "William, after Mulder's father. Mulder holds him. Mulder jokes that the boy has Scully's coloring and her eyes, but that he looks suspiciously like Skinner - a reference to the bald head. Scully doesn't understand why they didn't take her son from her. Mulder isn't sure, but maybe little William isn't what they thought he was. That doesn't make him any less a miracle, though. From the moment Scully became pregnant, she was afraid about how and why it happened. Mulder says that there were many possibilities, but they both know the truth. "Which is what?" she asks. Wordlessly, Mulder kisses Scully on the mouth. Note about dating: Evidence seen in this episode and the next indicates that The Lone Gunmen series finale cliffhanger All About Yves happens in the 48 hours between these two X-Files episodes. In Nothing Important Happened Today Langly's skin is dyed blue but in Existence it is not. In All About Yves we see the Romeo 61 list which includes recent entries on dates 5-14-01 and 5-4-01, indicating that this episode takes place not earlier than late May. The inconsistency of these dates versus Scully's 12 month pregnancy will probably never be addressed on screen. Late May 2001 Nothing Important Happened Today I.  A man, later identified as Carl Wormus, is having a drink in a bar. He dips his fingers into his glass and removes the ice. A striking dark-haired woman, later identified as Shannon McMahan, walks in and seats herself at the bar. Wormus moves over to talk with her. He wants his drinks without water, but the bartender always gives him drinks "on the rocks," he tells her. He doesn't like water because of an additive, "Chloramine," that the government adds to water. After only a few moments of banter McMahan suggests that they go outside "for some air." They are soon zooming down the highway in his convertible, apparently going to her home out in the country. Wormus slows as they approach a drawbridge because the bridge is rising. McMahan slams her hand down on his leg, flooring the accelerator. The car crashes through a barricade and falls into the water. Underwater, McMahan sits placidly in her seat as Carl struggles to release his seatbelt and swim to the surface. As he begins to rise out of his seat, McMahan grabs his ankle and holds him underwater. It is 48 hours after we last saw Mulder and Scully. Scully wakes early in the morning because little William is fussing. Someone is in the shower but we can't tell who. In the living room we see suitcases, all packed. The implication is that Mulder is also in the apartment and is preparing to leave. In rapid succession we see Doggett awake in his bedroom and Reyes awakened at her apartment by a phone call. The call is from Brad Follmer, an FBI assistant director who she once had a relationship with. He asks her to visit his office. Doggett makes coffee and hears a TV report of Wormus' death. He was a deputy administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Follmer is listening to the same report when he hears Reyes in his outer office. His assistant was away and she was going to leave a note rather than knock on his door. He attempts to kiss her and she resists, surprising him because a couple of years ago in New York she used to ask him to close the door so them could kiss. Doggett's investigation of assistant director Kersh is causing waves, Follmer tells her. He gives her two security tapes from the FBI building. One shows her meeting with Doggett. He doesn't immediately tell her the content of the other tape. Doggett and Kersh meet each other on the elevator in the FBI building. Doggett says that his investigation is nothing personal. Kersh says that if Doggett can't find anything on him, nobody can. Doggett and Reyes talk in the X-Files office. He's upset that he is just doing his job but is getting a lot of heat. Reyes tells him that he may be unable to do his job – the second tape is from the FBI parking garage, where Doggett and Skinner were attacked, Rorer's car exploded and Skinner shot Krycek. The tape shows nothing but an empty garage. The garage has been cleaned of all evidence. Doggett goes to Mulder's apartment but it is vacant with all of Mulder's possessions removed. At the Greater Maryland Water Reclamation Facility in Baltimore, McMahan emerges from a huge tank of water. She is nude. A plant worker, Roland McFarland, sees her fleetingly across the facility and walks to investigate. She grabs him and dives into the tank with him, pulling him deep underwater. Doggett arrives at Scully's apartment uninvited. The phone has been off the hook to keep from disturbing the baby and Doggett panicked that Scully may have disappeared also. Scully will not explain where Mulder went, just saying that he's gone. Reyes talks with Skinner. She and Doggett have been unable to trace Mulder. Skinner doesn't know where Mulder is and probably wouldn't tell her if he did. Doggett arrives and Skinner asks Doggett to drop the investigation of Kersh. No, the bad guys didn't get to Skinner and he isn't afraid of them, but he is afraid for the lives of Mulder, Scully and the baby if the investigation continues. Doggett concludes that if he doesn't drop the investigation he's alone on it. Reyes counters that she is still with him. Later, Reyes meets Follmer in a bar. She asked him out and is much more receptive to him now – because she wants something from him. She says there isn't going to be an investigation of Kersh and it probably means that she will be going back to New Orleans because if they drop the investigation the X-Files will also probably be dropped, and it is her dream assignment. She also implies that she wanted to be in Washington to be closer to Follmer. Without saying it she is asking for his help to keep her assigned to the X-Files. Doggett goes to Scully's apartment uninvited again and asks for her help. She says she doesn't know how to find Mulder and that his disappearance makes sense in its own way. He brings up the claim about the super soldier project. She says the baby is fine and encourages him to drop it and when he resists she asks him to leave and not return. He leaves without pushing further. Back home, Doggett works to track down and telephone several buddies from his Marine company, trying to find more information on what happened to Rorer after his discharge. One of them, seen in a photograph of the Marine company, is Shannon McMahan. He does not reach her. Reyes passes McMahan in an FBI building hallway. McMahan is wearing FBI credentials. Reyes goes to the X-Files office where she edits a report, breaking a pencil in the process. She gets up on the desk to retrieve pencils that are stuck in the ceiling, but hears someone in the hallway outside. The elevator door is just closing as Reyes enters the hallway, but she finds an envelope containing the obituary of Carl Wormus. Scully puts William down for a nap and lies down herself. She awakes to find star- shaped ornaments on the crib mobile over William spinning slowly with William crying. Scully stops the mobile from turning but when she releases them they begin turning again. She phones Doggett and says she was wrong to ask him to drop the investigation. He vows that he hasn't, and that something has come up. Scully agrees to meet him and Reyes at Quantico, leaving Maggie Scully watching William. Doggett has obtained Wormus' body and wants Scully to do a thorough autopsy, even though tests show Wormus was drunk when he drowned. Skinner calls Doggett to say that Doggett made a mistake when he obtained the body without jurisdiction. Skinner warns Doggett to watch his back. As Scully works with Reyes watching, Doggett goes back home and meets with the Lone Gunmen. Langly's skin is still blue (see the Lone Gunmen series finale) and Frohike quips that they may need to charge Doggett to help their finances. They hack into various computer systems but can't find out anything about Wormus, except that he had an obsession about water. Scully concludes that Wormus did, indeed, drown. Reyes is impressed that Scully can do the autopsy all the while being concerned that something is wrong with her baby. Scully thinks maybe she's seeing connections that aren't really there. She discovers marks in Wormus' ankle that spear to be from fingers, like someone was holding him underwater. Follmer tells Kersh that Scully is at Quantico and Kersh asks Follmer to handle it. Follmer protests that he has a conflict – Reyes – but Kersh can't do anything because he is under investigation. McMahan visits Scully's apartment but Maggie does not let her in. McMahan claims to work with Scully but when Maggie asks her name, McMahan disappears. Scully and Reyes leave the autopsy room. The work is done and Scully needs to get home. They see McMahan following them. They don't know who she is, but Reyes remembers her from the FBI office. Follmer and a team of agents accost Scully and Reyes and take them back to the examining room. Follmer tells Reyes that he is doing his best to "cover her ass." The body is gone and Follmer demands to know where Doggett took it. Reyes denies that Doggett took it anywhere and suspects that Follmer slipped them Wormus' obituary to set Doggett up. This claim appears to confuse Follmer. Reyes talks to the Gunmen, still at Doggett's. They have discovered that Wormus was receiving encrypted e-mail from McFarland at the water reclamation facility. Doggett and Skinner have gone to Baltimore to investigate. They slip into the plant illegally and locate McFarland's desk, locating files mentioning Chloramine. Follmer and the other agents storm into the plant. Skinner and Doggett have to run to avoid them, running through the catwalks with the other agents in pursuit. Skinner is slowed down when he bumps into a protruding pipe. Follmer catches up and believes that Skinner is also there to apprehend Doggett, rather than because the two are working together. Doggett hides from Follmer in the water tank. The Chloramine files slowly drift upward, but Follmer cannot see anything due to the reflections on the dark water. Doggett feels his ankle grabbed and we see McMahan, nude again but obscured by the murky waste, pulling him downward deeper into the tank. To be continued. Late May 2001 Nothing Important Happened Today II.  The captain of a ship at sea enters a security area within his vessel using a hand print scanner and a retinal scan. He has a message for Dr. Nordlinger. It's an encrypted message translated to read "Emergency, stop. Return to operations base directly, stop." The Doctor confirms that they are returning to base. On a big screen in the background we see a microscope projection of work on a human ova. The Captain returns to the base and orders the signal sent that, "We're coming in." Follmer looks around the tank that is filled with still water. Just after he turns away bubbles break the surface. Doggett has lost consciousness underwater but McMahan kisses him to breathe air into his lungs. Reyes meets with Follmer and Skinner. Follmer is charged with reigning in the X-Files and he is having trouble understanding the current investigation. He cites unauthorized autopsies and break-ins to the water plant. He is trying to give both Reyes and Skinner a chance to put a positive spin on what is going on. Follmer tells Reyes that she shouldn't insist on an investigation within the FBI. It won't expose anything but her unless she distances herself from Doggett. She walks out of the office. Doggett wakes up in a bed, coughing. McMahan is there, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. His lungs are full of water. She had to pull him under water or they would have caught him. She says she is the product of 50 years of military science – a bioengineered combat unit. She doesn't sleep and can breathe under water, she claims. She and Rorer were recruited right out of the Marines. They were Adam and Eve but there are many more super soldiers now. She hates what she is and needs Doggett's help to stop the expanding program. The two men she killed were preparing to distribute a drug in the water supply, she says. The ship is now in a civilian dock in Baltimore. The Captain prepares to leave the ship although the first mate reminds him that security rules prohibit them from leaving. The Captain walks to a pay phone on the dock and calls the office of Carl Wormus, but gets voice mail. He doesn't know that Wormus is dead. Skinner visits Scully's apartment because he couldn't be candid on the phone. She and Mulder asked him to leave this matter alone and he can't understand why Scully is now getting involved. She can't explain what happened with her baby but she needs answers. It's too dangerous for her to contact Mulder. Skinner thinks she has made a big mistake by getting involved. In the morning Scully gets a call from Reyes and Doggett. They may have some answers for her. Scully arrives at Doggett's to find him, Reyes and McMahan there. McMahan says the Chloramine being put in the water system has a changed molecular makeup and is being delivered into every home to prime the population to breed a generation of super soldiers. She says she is a first generation prototype but they are seven generations advanced beyond her and a super soldier has been born from a mutated human egg. Scully is not inclined to trust McMahan – she's heard lots of conspiracy claims before. McMahan shows her a lump on the back of her neck that is just like one viewers have seen on Rorer's neck. She also lifts her shirt. While Scully examines McMahan, Reyes tells Doggett that she doesn't trust McMahan. Scully finds a small spinal deformity - the bump - but otherwise McMahan is physically normal. Doggett still thinks she's the key to their case. Skinner interrupts their meeting with a phone call to Doggett. As a result of the call, Doggett bursts into Kersh's office. Doggett is being suspended for insubordination but Doggett says that will not stop his own investigation. The Captain returns to the bridge of his ship. His first mate has been replaced by Rorer, who says he is now second in command. Reyes finds that McMahan is in the Department of Justice database, listing her as an employee. The Lone Gunmen enter, Langly with his face no longer blue. They used fake FBI passes to get into the building. Their Internet service was disconnected for nonpayment so they use FBI access to show Reyes phone records from Wormus' voice mail system. Someone has called several times since he died, even though his death was big news. As they are connected to the system another call comes in. They scramble to patch in and Frohike answers the call, pretending to be Wormus. It is the Captain calling – the ship has been ordered into port and they (the Captain and Wormus) are under suspicion. As they had previously talked, the Captain wants Wormus to contact the FBI and tell them about the lab on board the ship and expose the horror and inhumanity. Rorer sees the Captain making the call. Reyes accosts Follmer in his office. She is asking for his help again – to obtain McMahan' Department of Justice case files. She thinks Follmer is on the wrong side in this matter and that Doggett and all the rest of them are being set up. Later, after receiving the files, Reyes tells Doggett and Scully that McMahan is not telling the truth. The two men she killed had contacted her as whistle-blowers, reporting wrongdoing. Reyes claims that McMahan hasn't been able to find the Captain of the ship so she is using Doggett to locate him. Scully says if there really is a lab on the ship it may hold answers. The Captain tricks Dr. Nordlinger into opening the security door and demands the computer hard drives containing data on the "butcher shop" they are running. Scully, Doggett and Reyes arrive at the dock. They are supposed to meet the Captain by the pay phone. They see a man walking toward them and Doggett realizes it is Rorer. Doggett tells Scully and Reyes to run and Doggett fires his gun at Rorer repeatedly, without effect. Rorer attacks Doggett and beats him but McMahan appears and beheads Rorer, saving Doggett. "You didn't trust me," she says, but a hand from Rorer's beheaded body, which is still standing upright, slams through McMahan' torso and they both fall into the water, apparently dead. Scully, Doggett and Reyes board the ship. They find nobody on board but they find the severed head and body of the Captain. Doggett goes one way and the women go another. Doggett finds an explosive device counting down from two minutes. He rushes off to find the other agents, locating them in the lab. Scully realizes immediately that the lab has been used to modify ova, female eggs for transplant. As Doggett shouts that they have to leave, Scully desperately searches through the records, looking for her own name. Doggett shouts that there is no time (not unlike the way Scully shouted at Mulder in The X-Files Movie) and that they'll find another way. Scully gives up. They flee and the ship explodes just as they reach the dock. 48 hours later Doggett enters Kersh's office with his completed report. Kersh is not implicated. Kersh looks at it briefly and reads about super soldiers, Navy ships and McMahan, all disappeared. The report mentions, "a conspiracy like a cancer within the US government." Doggett says he knows that Kersh's hands are dirty in this matter, but Doggett has concluded that Kersh is the one who left Wormus' obituary to be found. Kersh claims that he is also a victim of threats on his life by the conspiracy and that he encouraged Mulder to leave. Doggett realizes that it was actually Scully who convinced Mulder to go into hiding. Kersh cites the personal diary of King George III on July 4, 1776 "Nothing important happened today" to show that revolutions can start that will change the world forever and even kings can fail to notice. Doggett leaves Kersh's office and meets Follmer in the elevator. Follmer has heard that Doggett has a stay on his suspension. The Deputy Director has the X-Files operation just where he wants it. Follmer claims that he is a friend of The X-Files and smirks that it is a comfort to have them "down there." Underwater, we see McMahan' body. Her eyes suddenly pop open – she is alive. Scully is sleeping on a sofa beside William's crib. She checks the baby then lies down again and closes her eyes. William waves an arm and as the screen goes black for the credits we hear the sound of the mobile turning again. Spring 2002 William.  At a country home, a man is painting a hand-sized wooden buffalo. His wife is nearby, pensive. She doesn’t understand how someone could give up a child. Her husband assures her that God has reasons for asking someone to do that. People from the adoption agency drive up and deliver a child to the couple - an infant boy. In Georgetown, Scully drives up to her apartment building. A man watches in the shadows across the street. Doggett leaves the X-Files office and the same man slips into the office and begins searching the files. Doggett, having forgotten something, returns and the man attacks him, and then runs. Doggett uses his gun to stops the man in the hallway. Scully is called to the office and talks with Doggett and Reyes. The man says his name is Daniel Miller and says he got into the building with a key card given to him by Fox Mulder. The man’s body is heavily burned. Under questioning, he tells Scully that he came here to find answers about the government conspiracy that did this to him. Miller had taken several files relating to Fox and Samantha Mulder. Scully has Miller transferred to Quantico, where she can do a thorough examination. She concludes that the injuries are not from burns. He says he was injected with something that burned his body inside and out. Doggett determines that Miller’s ID is fake. Doggett’s theory is that Miller is really Mulder. Scully continues her examination of Miller. He won’t tell her his real name. People in the FBI would kill him is they knew he was being held there. When he tells her that he might be able to help her, too, Scully has a flash of Mulder saying the same words, but she tells Doggett and Reyes that Miller is definitely not Mulder. They take Miller back to the X-Files office where he tells them that what was done to him was a failed attempt to make him into an alien. The plan is to do this to everyone. He did not locate the filed he says Mulder told him about. Someone has already removed them. Scully has them at home and the agents take Miller there. Mulder and Scully agreed to remove the files from the X-Files office. If Miller were really Mulder, he would have known where they are. William cries and Scully finds Miller in William’s room. Miller claims that Mulder has told him so much about William. He wants to hold the boy FOR Mulder. Doggett and Skinner talk. The tests show that Miller’s blood type matches with Mulder but there are physiological differences that may or may not be the result of Miller’s condition. Mulder, however, knows those files inside and out. Why not just tell Miller what is in them? The phone rings and Skinner gets the DNA report on Miller. Scully talks with Miller, who is still at her home. It’s all been a good act, she says. He knew that the files were at her home and he was just pretending. Miller claims that William is part alien. She demands to know who he really is. Doggett and Reyes enter the room. Miller’s DNA is a perfect match for Mulder’s. Scully still cannot believe that it is really Mulder. The agents realize that Miller has slipped out. Doggett chases Miller, finally catching him in an alley. Miller allows himself to be taken back to Scully’s apartment, but he has picked up a small package in the alley that Doggett does not notice. Miller is given a tranquilizer so that he can sleep. The agents agree to keep the situation a secret. They talk, trying to understand what is going on. Scully says that you get to know a person in so many ways. She still cannot accept that Miller is Mulder. Miller, however, has palmed the pills and is still awake. He slips into William’s room and prepares a syringe with a very long needle. The drug he prepares was in the package he picked up in the alley. Scully hears William cry and rushes to his room. Miller is back in his bed, but there is blood on William’s sheets and it is clear that Miller has done something. Scully and Reyes rush William to a hospital emergency room where doctors go to work on him. Doggett questions Miller and finds the drug. After a long wait in the emergency room, Scully and Reyes are told that William is fine. There is evidence that his skin was broken by the injection. He has elevated levels of iron in his blood, but there are no other effects. Scully now has everything figured out. Miller is in an FBI interrogation room. Scully tells him that he is the perfect example of all that is vile and disgusting in this world. Skinner watches through the one-way glass. He also realizes who it is. Miller is Jeffrey Spender. The DNA match was because Spender and Mulder are half brothers. He injected William with a drug that is a form of magnetite. Spender says that William is the one thing the aliens need. The injection took William away from them, but it will never be over because they will always know what William was and will never accept what he now is. Spender hates his father, the Cigarette Smoking Man. Spender says that when his father failed to prevent the alien colonization, he wanted nothing more than to see the world fail, too. Spender, at least, thinks he has prevented the colonization by transforming William. It was his form of revenge on his father. Scully says she can protect William, but Spender disagrees, implying that the conspiracy will try again to transform William. He asks Scully to look at him and asks if that is what she wants for her son. Scully is back at home, making a choice. She and Reyes talk. Reyes tries to convince Scully that Spender was lying. Scully asks if she can really insist that she can protect William, only to learn too late that she can’t. William didn’t have a choice to come into this life. Scully doesn’t have a choice in knowing what he is but she does have a choice about the life her son will have. Shouldn’t she choose that he will never have to be afraid of anyone or anything? She could never really promise him that. It is clear that Scully has decided to give William up for adoption. William’s new parents are those seen in the beginning of the episode. The father finishes preparing the painted buffalos as a new crib mobile as the mother puts William down in his crib. The mobile is placed over the crib and the parents turn off the light and leave the room. William gazes up at the mobile, smiling. As the episode ends, the mobile hangs naturally above the crib. May 2002 The Truth.  At the Mount Weather Complex at Bluemont, Virginia, a helicopter lands. Several men in suits exit the helicopter, including Fox Mulder. The men board a bus that takes them through a doorway into an underground complex. Inside, US Marine Corps officers meet them, but Mulder slips away. Using an electronic key card, he penetrates deeper and deeper into secure areas. In one room he activates a computer console and enters a password. The screen shows the text "December 22, 2012...Date for the mobilization of alien....." Knowle Rorer enters the chamber and finds the computer that Mulder was using. Mulder jumps him and they struggle, but Mulder breaks away and runs. At the end of a hallway, a figure opens a door, letting Mulder through, then locks it so Rorer can't get through. the figure is Alex Krycek. "No -- you're dead," says Mulder. Alarms sound and Mulder runs on. He is trapped on a catwalk and Rorer approaches him. They struggle again and Mulder manages to flip Rorer over a catwalk railing. Rorer falls several stories to electrical cables below and is electrocuted. As Mulder pulls himself back up onto the catwalk, Marine guards have their guns on him. Mulder is in solitary confinement where he is being brainwashed. He is abused and kept from sleeping by uniformed troops. They eventually get him to say that he entered the government facility illegally to find something that wasn’t there and that he deserves the harshest punishment for his crime. Scully and Skinner enter the Marine Corps brig. They don’t know how long Mulder has been there, but he is being held for the murder of a military man. When they enter his cell, watched by a Marine guard, Mulder is unemotional and it seems that the brainwashing has worked. He says they are treating him well and he is clear about the crimes he has committed. Scully is confused by his reactions. After Scully and Skinner leave, Krycek appears in Mulder’s cell. Doggett and Reyes talk with Scully and Skinner. Mulder is accused of killing Rorer, but Doggett saw Rorer killed earlier. They know that Rorer is a supersoldier and cannot really be killed. They won’t be able to produce the body. Scully leaves the room, to beg for mercy with “the man upstairs.” Kersh talks with a Marine Corps general. The general will allow the FBI to give Mulder a hearing in a military tribunal, but the general wants a guilty verdict. Mulder is a crusader but a lot of people don’t like crusaders. Kersh reluctantly agrees. Scully and Skinner return to Mulder’s cell. There is no guard present this time and Mulder makes a Hannibal Lector joke. Mulder says he has to put on an act because of what they do to him if he doesn’t. Mulder and Scully engage in a long hug and an extended kiss. Skinner then tells Mulder that he is in big trouble. Mulder wants Skinner to represent him and says that they can’t try him without exposing themselves. Doggett and Reyes enter and say that they have identified where Rorer’s body is being held, at Fort Marlene. Later, Scully returns to Mulder’s cell. She needs him to confide in her or they will lose. Mulder thinks he can’t win. Scully is scared, but Mulder says he knows what he is doing. Skinner told him about William being given up for adoption. Scully is afraid Mulder will never forgive her, but he says he knows she had no chance. He has been in New Mexico, looking for the truth. When Scully asks what he found, Mulder smiles and says he cannot tell her. The military tribunal is ready to begin in a spartan hearing room. The prosecutor is an FBI lawyer. The five judges are FBI executives. Kersh presides. The prosecutor will call no witnesses, but introduces the sworn statements of 30 scientists who witnessed Mulder killing Rorer. Skinner moves for dismissal or delay because he can’t find his key witness, Marita Covarubius, but Kersh tells him that it is a military tribunal and he must proceed. Scully testifies first. As a scientist she came to believe in extra-terrestrial life and in a government conspiracy to hide the fact from the public. She believes that life came to Earth millions of years ago in a meteor from Mars, and along with it came an alien virus. It infected life on Earth, but that life died in the last ice age. The virus lay dormant in underground oil reservoirs. It resurfaced in contemporary times and signaled to other aliens who crashed at Roswell in 1947. The government captured aliens, obtained alien technology, and learned of alien plans to retake planet Earth. She also describes how she was abducted in 1994 by the military for experiments. The prosecutor demonstrates that Scully has no proof and accuses that she and Mulder were lovers and that she got pregnant and had Mulder’s love child. Scully has no good response to that accusation. Skinner calls Jeffrey Spender who testifies that his father led the conspiracy to hide the existence of extraterrestrials. Spender and Mulder are half brothers. He describes how Bill Mulder was killed and how Samantha was abducted and experimented on. Spender didn’t know of his father’s crimes when he went to work for the FBI. The prosecutor counters with Spender’s FBI written reports about Mulder, which are not complimentary. In Weed Hope, NM, a Native American youth rides his motorcycle up to a shack. Gibson Praise is inside. They have learned about Mulder. Gisbon will get ready to leave. Scully enters Mulder’s cell. She wants Mulder to make a plea bargain but he refuses. This is about the truth. Scully then urges Mulder to take the stand and testify, but he refuses. Scully is not just fighting for Mulder - she is fighting for the two of them, i.e, their relationship. After she leaves, X appears in Mulder’s cell. X asks what Mulder is doing and Mulder says he is putting the truth on trial. X says “they” have too much power to be afraid. He gives Mulder a piece of paper with Marita’s address written on it. Doggett, meanwhile, is at home on the phone to Fort Marlene, trying to track down the Rorer’s body, but he is getting the run-around. Reyes, also there, tells him that somebody is outside. They draw guns and discover that it is the Native American youth. He didn’t want to endanger “him,” meaning Gibson. Marita takes the stand. Her former position with the United Nations allowed her to further the interests of the conspirators, who called themselves The Syndicate. They were working to develop a vaccine against the alien virus, tracking subjects in the human population through their vaccination scars. She saw people in Russia actually amputate their arms to keep from being tracked. She came to hate the Syndicate but was found out and made a test subject. The Syndicate was trying to save only themselves but a group of renegade aliens who avoided infection by self-mutilation destroyed the conspirators. She resisted testifying before the tribunal because the conspiracy continues, conducted by others. The supersoldiers, like Rorer, are alien replacements. Krycek appears to Mulder, but nobody else in the room can see him. Krycek tells Mulder that “they” will kill Marita if she testifies further. Mulder insists that Skinner dismiss Marita, just as Skinner is beginning to press her for more details on the identity of the supersoldiers. Doggett enters the tribunal room and confers with Skinner, telling him that Gibson Praise is there to testify. Gibson testifies that he has been hiding Mulder in the desert for the last year. Gibson asserts that he can read minds. He looks around the room, reading the minds of everyone there. He says that one of the judges is an alien. Mulder jumps up, shouting that he wants the judge examined. Mulder struggles and is forcibly removed from the room. (End of the first hour of this two-hour episode.) Marine guards deliver Mulder to a conference room to talk with Doggett, Reyes and Skinner. Gibson is with Scully and is safe. Gibson feels that three of the judges are wavering. They encourage Mulder to testify. When he again declines, Doggett and Reyes say they will testify. Doggett goes first. He testifies about the supersoldiers and says that Rorer was one of them. Mulder couldn’t have killed him because the only way to do that is with a rare metal, magnetite. On cross examination, the prosecutor points out that it is the basis of Mulder’s case tat these supersoldiers are aliens. Doggett is unable to swear that he believes that the supersoldiers are aliens. Reyes testifies. She describes how Scully was surrounded by aliens as she was giving birth, including one that was shot at point blank range but didn’t die. Scully was one of many women who were used as surrogates. The child was important to the supersoldiers because of his powers. William, of course, cannot be produced to demonstrate these powers. When the prosecutor dismisses Reyes, she offers an outburst - what is the point here? To find the truth or to destroy the truth so nobody can find it? She looks directly at Kersh and says, “either way, you lose.” That night, Doggett and Reyes rush up to Scully’s apartment. Doggett finally found somebody at Fort Marlene who didn’t know he was supposed to give Doggett the run-around. The alleged body of Rorer has been moved to Quantico and Scully needs to examine it. Doggett will stay with Gibson. Scully and Reyes go to Quantico where they see the burned body. Scully sands Reyes to get Rorer’s military medical records. Scully goes to the tribunal and testifies that based on her tests, the body isn’t Rorer. Kersh orders her removed from the tribunal because she examined the body without authority. The room erupts and Kersh shouts that the trial is adjourned. Later, the five judges reenter the room. They have a verdict - guilty of first-degree murder. Mulder is allowed to speak before the sentence is passed. He congratulates them on succeeding where so many others have failed. Liars do not fear the truth if there are enough liars. No one lie can be buried forever. As much as they try to bury it, the truth is out there. Mulder sees the spirits of Krycek and X standing behind the judges as he speaks. Mulder tells the judges that they are getting rid of their headache, but only at the expense of cutting off their own heads. Scully, Doggett and Reyes wait at Scully’s apartment for the news. Skinner phones. The sentence is death by lethal injection. Scully cries. Rorer drives up to the Marine Corps brig and is admitted. Doggett and Skinner enter Mulder’s cell - they are breaking him out. Skinner has keys and they run through the hallways. Rorer enters Mulder’s cell, and finds him missing. The alarm is sounded. As the three fugitives try to escape, the meet Kersh who tells them that they will never get out the way they are trying. Kersh says he is doing what he should have done all along. He helps them get through a cut in the chain link fence of the Marine base and into a waiting vehicle. They drive to where Scully, Reyes and Gibson ware waiting with another vehicle. Kersh tells them to drive north to Canada and get an airplane. They must get off the continent to be safe. Mulder and Scully drive off, but Mulder heads south. He is going to see a man about the truth. Doggett and Reyes take Gibson to the X-Files office, but the file cabinets and furniture have been removed. Skinner knows and he is trying to get to the bottom of it. They all go the Kersh’s office and are met at the door by an agent previously shown to be a supersoldier. Only Skinner is allowed to enter. Gibson says that the agent knows where Mulder and Scully are going and “they” are going to kill them. Mulder and Scully are on the Texas-New Mexico border. Mulder stops the car, kissing Scully as she sleeps. He gets out of the car to urinate. The spirits of the Lone Gunmen greet him. They ask him why he would risk perfect happiness. Mulder needs to know if he can change the truth. He gets back into the car and drives on. Mulder and Scully arrive at an ancient Anasazi pueblo. They see smoke from a fire - someone is living on an upper level of the pueblo. Mulder and Scully climb the ladders. A Navajo woman is cooking. Mulder says he was sent a message and a key to the Marine facility by a wise man who lives in the ruins - the Keeper of the Truth. Doggett and Reyes are in a helicopter, flying across the desert, looking for Mulder and Scully. Mulder and Scully are ushered into the presence of the wise man - it is the Cigarette Smoking Man, with long gray hair and still with a tracheotomy device in his throat. He says that Mulder now knows the truth, which he found in the Marine base, but Mulder refuses to speak it, even though it could save his life. Indian wise men hid in this pueblo as their own culture was destroyed by the aliens. The pueblo contains magnetite, which makes it safe against the aliens. Those wise men were the first “shadow government.” The Cigarette Smoking Man wants to tell Scully his story - a story that has terrified every President since Truman. The Mayans were so afraid that their calendar stops on the date of the final alien invasion, December 22, 2012. Mulder saw the date at Mount Weather where our own secret government will be hiding when the invasion happens. The Cigarette Smoking Man protected Mulder all those years, waiting for this final moment. Broken and afraid, now you can die, the Smoking Man says. As two black helicopters fly through desert canyons, Doggett and Reyes are dropped off from their own helicopter. As they approach the pueblo, Rorer drives up in another vehicle. He approaches them and Doggett fires at him. Rorer is not affected by the gunshot to the chest, but as he continues forward, the magnetite affects him. He zooms into the rock and explodes with a puff of dust. Doggett and Reyes run on and meet Mulder and Scully, running out of the pueblo. They know you are here and you have to get out, Doggett tells them. Mulder and Scully won’t get into their own vehicle, but grab Rorer’s and drive off. Doggett and Reyes leave in Mulder and Scully’s original vehicle. The black helicopters arrive and use rockets to destroy the pueblo. One rocket impacts directly on the room where the Smoking Man sits, exploding the chamber in a ball of flame. In Roswell, New Mexico, Mulder and Scully are in a motel room. It isn’t said, but the implication is that the government thinks they are dead, killed at the pueblo. Scully, in a bathrobe, is on the bed. Mulder sits on the floor. Mulder recalls sitting in a motel room like this when they first met. He wanted to convince her of the truth and he eventually did, but he has been chasing after monsters with a butterfly net. He didn’t tell her what he had learned because he didn’t want to accept defeat. He was afraid it would crush her spirit. She asks why she would accept it if he won’t. You only fail if you give up and Scully knows Mulder won’t give up, even now. If this is the truth he has been looking for, what else is to believe, she asks. He replies that he wants to believe that the dead are not lost to us, and if we listen to them they can give us the power to save ourselves. Scully says, “we believe the same thing.” Mulder moves to the bed and they hold each other. “Maybe there’s hope,” he says as the episode and the TV series ends. December 22, 2012 The date set for the alien invasion, confirmed by Mulder at the Mount Weather Complex at Bluemont, Virginia. (The Truth) In Patient X, in 1998, the members of the consortium indicate that they thought they were fifteen years away from the beginning of the colonization, placing that event in 2012 or 2013. The dawning of The New Age, as believed by the Red Museum. The end of the longest calendar cycle of the Aztec people, who worship lizard gods. (Archeological accounts January 24, 2016 Premier of the 2016 season of The X-Files. My Struggle. The episode opens with a narration by Mulder. As photographs flash, he describes his sister’s disappearance and his resulting obsession since childhood with alien abductions, his service with the FBI and work on the X-Files, the assignment of Scully to debunk his work, and their work together. The X-Files was closed in 2002 and investigation of the paranormal halted, he relates, but his personal obsession did not. We see several examples of past UFO sightings as Mulder describes them and other bits of evidence for UFOs, concluding with the crash of a flying saucer in Northwest New Mexico (not Roswell which is in Southeast New Mexico). Mulder wonders if all of these things are really a hoax or are we being lied to. In the first in a series of a flashbacks, a bus transports a man referred to as “Doc” to a UFO crash in Northwestern New Mexico. A saucer sticks out of the ground at an angle, with massive damage. Military personnel are working around the site. At Our Lady of Sorrows hospital in Washington, DC, Scully receives a phone call from Walter Skinner at the FBI, looking for Mulder. Tad O’Malley, a conservative talk show host and conspiracy theorist wants to meet Mulder and has asked Skinner for help. Outside, Scully waits as Mulder arrives in a taxi. They have not seen each other for some time. They are no longer living together but are happy to see each other. O’Malley approaches. He invites them into a limousine because he does not want to be overheard. He says he is a true believer, but Mulder and Scully reply that The X-Files are closed and they have moved on. Mulder thinks O’Malley is in it for the ratings. Mulder tests his knowledge and O’Malley knows his stuff. He says he is ready to blow open a massive conspiracy but needs their expertise. In Low Moor Virginia, O’Malley introduces Mulder and Scully to Sveta Zataley, a young woman who Mulder once interviewed after her first childhood abduction. She shows them scars on her stomach from many abductions. The abductors also implant false memories, but she remembers sometimes, she says. The aliens have made her pregnant several times, but removed the babies before they are born. She believes she has alien DNA. It is familiar story, told time and again by abductees. Mulder wants Scully to perform a DNA test to confirm what Sveta says, but Scully is clearly not thrilled by the idea. In a 1947 flashback, it is night at the UFO crash site. Soldiers are following a trail of blood and find a gray alien, injured and trying to crawl away. They shoot it, over the Doc’s objections. Scully and Sveta are in the hospital with Scully taking a mouth swab for the DNA testing. Sveta claims to be able to move things with her mind sometimes, but cannot control the ability. She senses that Mulder and Scully were previously a couple. She says Mulder was diagnosed as depressed and that is what ended their relationship. She senses that they have a child together…and that Scully has been abducted. O’Malley arrives at Mulder’s rural home in a helicopter (apparently the house seen in the second X-Files movie). He is taking Mulder to meet some people who are very paranoid. He takes Mulder into a building, blindfolded. They have a triangular flying saucer in a “faraday cage” which shields it from outside radiation. It is called an Alien Replica Vehicle (ARV). When Mulder touches it, it begins to hover. It runs on zero point energy or "torroidal energy," Mulder is told, and it can become invisible. In a 1947 flashback, the gray’s body is recovered. The doc wants to examine it. Scully is testing herself when O’Malley entered her lab. She is assists surgeons working on children with a condition known as microtia who have a congenital deformity in which the external ear is underdeveloped -- often they are Navajo, she says. She is far from her pervious life on the X-Files. She remembers good things about that work - it was some of the most intense and challenging work she has ever done. Her relationship with Mulder was one of the most intense and challenging she may ever have, she tells O'Malley. O’Malley says he is actually there just because he wanted to see Scully again. Mulder calls at Sveta’s door at night. He saw Sveta look at O’Malley briefly earlier when giving an answer, as if for a non-verbal question. She admits that she does not believe that it was aliens who abduct her, but rather men in flying ships. She is afraid for her life. Mulder calls Scully -- what if there is no alien conspiracy and everything they have been led to believe may be wrong? Sveta is the key to everything, Mulder says. Skinner takes Mulder to the former X-Files office. The files are gone and Skinner does not know where they are. (In The Truth, during Mulder's trial Doggett and Reyes had gone to the X-Files office and found that the file cabinets and furniture had been removed. Skinner was said to be trying to find out who had taken them.) Skinner called Mulder because he is looking out for him. Mulder believes that he was being led in a false direction when he worked on the X-Files, but now thinks that the danger has never been greater. “So do something about it,” Skinner says. O’Malley features Scully’s work on his show. Scully watches and then receives Sveta’s test results. She asks for certain samples to be retested. Mulder meets an older man outside in the dark – we discover that it is the man who was the Doc at Roswell in 1947. He had told Mulder to call, if he ever put the pieces together. Mulder called because he seen the ARV and believes he now knows the truth. The countdown has begun, Mulder thinks, for a massive conspiracy against humanity by men using alien technology. The Doc reveals little, but says Mulder is nearly there, adding that Roswell was a smokescreen. "So I've been told," replies Mulder, alluding what Deep Throat told him in 1994, that Roswell was a "smoke screen", and that a half dozen better alien DNA samples were obtained between 1947 and 1994. (The Erlenmeyer Flask) Scully arrives at Mulder’s house, concerned because he hung up on her and seems out of control. Mulder says that all these years they we have been deceived. She has seen him this way before, on fire believing he can save the world. They argue, then Scully is surprised to see that Sveta is at Mulder’s home. She is the key to everything, he says. Scully is about to leave, but O’Malley arrives. A meeting is about to begin. Mulder tells what Scully perceives as a wild story – after the end of WWII the time was right for the conspiracy. He spins a tale of study of alien technology and use of alien DNA and human hybridization. Mulder and O’Malley are not sure exactly what this conspiracy is trying to accomplish, but “they” are driven by corporate greed, with a goal of taking over America and then the world. O’Malley takes over the story and it gets more and more paranoid. The government is preparing to use all of our information against us in the final take-over by an international conspiracy. It will seem like an attack on America by terrorists or a false alien attack. The Russians tried it in 1947 (apparently a reference to Roswell and what the Doc called a smokescreen). O’Malley is going to broadcast the story tomorrow, but Scully discounts it. Sveta’s tests came back negative, with no evidence of alien DNA, she says. Scully is back at work the next day. She watches O’Malley’s broadcast. Sveta has announced that O’Malley is lying and forced her to say what she did. Mulder is also watching and says “They got to her.” Military units enter the building where Mulder saw the ARV and blow it up. Later in the day, Scully check’s O’Malley’s website again, and it is unavailable. Mulder approaches her in the hospital parking garage. He tells another wild story about runaway greenhouse gases making Earth as hot as Venus, and the elite leaving the planet. Scully urgently wants to find Sveta and protect her. Her first tests came back negative, but Scully had her entire genome retested, as well as Scully’s own. They both DID come back with non-human elements. Scully is ready to move to stop this conspiracy – whether or not she is ready, there is no choice. Skinner calls. Sveta is driving a car, but the electrical system dies. A narrow beam of intense light strikes the car from above, from a huge triangular UFO. The car explodes as she attempts to escape. We do not know whether she survives. The Cigarette Smoking Man receives a phone call. We have a small problem, he says. They have reopened the X-Files he says, as someone holds a cigarette to his throat (where we saw in season 9 that he had had a tracheotomy). Note: Sveta's last name "Zataley" is from DNA test document close-up. February 22. My Struggle II. The episode begins with a narration by Scully, paralleling Mulder’s in My Struggle 1. She tells of her assignment to the X-Files. She came to understand that Mulder’s work was worthy of their investigation and that a world existed on the fringes of accepted science. She would also come to fear that the FBI was threatened by dark forces. Her abduction and intervening incidents led her to believe that she was subjected to tests and threats. She suspects a conspiracy of men hiding science for 60 years, a self-interested cabal wanting to consolidate power. But questions about these men remain. In recent tests, she has discovered DNA anomalies in her own blood that she can only classify as alien. Scully arrives at the X-Files office, but Mulder is not there. She sits in his chair and sees that he has been watching Truth Squad. Tad O’Malley is back after six weeks with what he calls a major discovery, that there is alien DNA in virtually every American Citizen. Tad calls Mulder’s phone and asks Scully her to come to Mulder’s home. He is not there and the place is in disarray. O’Malley has had his own DNA tested and it also contains anomalies. Back at the X-Files office, Scully tells Skinner and Einstein about O’Malley’s claims. Einstein thinks it is science fiction, but Scully says the facts cannot be discounted. Scully and Einstein go to Our Lady of Sorrows Hospital. Scully is grateful that Einstein has come along. As they enter, they are accosted by a disoriented young man – his arm has a wound but Nurse Sandeep takes him in hand. Mulder is driving a car and his face is bloody. Skinner calls, but Mulder ignores the call and speeds up. Scully draws blood from Einstein and Scully tells about her own anomaly. They share a faith in science, but the science they were taught only takes them a distance toward the truth. Scully suspects their smallpox vaccines years ago, but Scully does not know why. The possibility is reason enough to run the tests. Agent Miller arrives. People on the Internet are freaking out about O’Malley’s claims. He has a guest describing fast moving contagions. Scully thinks it is all too plausible. Scully asks the Sandeep about the man who was apparently in the military – Scully thinks the symptoms indicated anthrax. She notes that soldiers deploying to Iraq were given vaccines. Anthrax is the “canary in the coal mine” and other diseases may follow. This may be the advent of a global contagion, according to Scully. Mulder is in his car as Scully calls him, but he does not answer. He drives on to South Carolina. In the X-Files office late at night Miller watches O’Malley report anthrax infections. On Mulder’s computer, Miller finds the address Mulder was searching for – Spartanburg, SC. Soldiers arrive at the hospital. Einstein wants to consider all explanations, but Scully thinks they are in deep trouble. Einstein points out that it is only one class of people affected, the military. Scully receives a mysterious call from a woman why says she has the answer, someone who was there for Scully before. Scully agrees to meet the woman. It is Monica Reyes, formerly assigned to the X-Files. She has been gone from the FBI for a decade. In a series of flashbacks we see her story. The badly burned Cigarette Smoking Man summoned her to a meeting and made her an offer that changed her life. He says he is not an evil man, but he is the most powerful man in the world. He threatened her with the ultimate weapon – the ability to kill everyone on the planet except for the chosen few. Now Reyes works for him. Hers was the hand holding his cigarette in My Struggle I. They won’t know what hit them, he says in the flashback, but their fates were sealed since birth. She tells Scully that both of them are among the chosen few, with modified DNA. We continue to see Reyes’ story in flashbacks. The Smoking Man sent a man to Mulder to offer him a deal. They fought. The man attempted to kill Mulder, but Mulder got the drop on him, demanding to know who sent him. In the next scene, we see Mulder holding a gun on the Cigarette Smoking Man. You sent for me, I’m here, Mulder says (presumably Spartanburg, South Carolina). The Smoking Man claims to have controlled Mulder since before he knew who he was. It is far too late for heroics, he says, but he wants to save Mulder’s life, so he can see Scully again. He didn’t set out to destroy the world, he says, people did. The Smoking Man lists climate change and other man-made disasters. The aliens predicted this but none of them could save the world from annihilation. The Smoking Man says he just changed the timetable. He offers Mulder “a seat at the big table.” They can start the world anew. Mulder refuses, but CSM notes that Mulder appears to be sick already. It is not too late. O’Malley reports that hospitals are being overrun, but the mainstream media is failing to report the epidemic of diseases. He claims that chem trails are being used to spread it. Immunity to common germs is breaking down. Scully returns to her hospital. Reyes has told her how to defeat what is called the Spartan Virus. Nurse Sandeep says they are overrun with sick people. Scully needs Einstein’s help to act quickly. Scully now knows it is gene tampering. Alien DNA saves people, but the smallpox vaccine gene tampering is what makes people susceptible to losing their immune system. Scully wants to amplify her own DNA and create a vaccine against the gene therapy. CSM tells Mulder that it is no time for pride. The ultimate irony – all thanks to the Spartan Virus. The Smoking Man removes a partial face mask revealing mutilated features. Mulder is very sick. Meanwhile Einstein and Scully work, but they find no alien DNA at the location where Scully saw it before. Nurse Sandeep comes in – the doctors are all getting sick. O’Malley reports the first deaths – soldiers and the elderly. He urges viewers to stay indoors. He and his crew are also sick, but they will continue to report as long as they can. In the hospital, the wards are overflowing. Power flickers. Einstein says they have to figure it out. What is wrong with the science? The virus removes the gene that is essential to the immune system. The alien DNA somehow deactivates the virus, returning the immune system to functioning. Einstein wonders if maybe their sample of Scully’s blood was too small. Miller has found Mulder. Both are sick and the Smoking Man is still there. There is nothing anyone can do, he says. But Miller takes Mulder, helping him into the car. The Smoking Man tells Miller “before he dies, say goodbye for me.” Einstein takes more blood from Scully. Einstein is starting to get sick. Their test this time finds a small bit of alien DNA. They can have a cure in a few hours. Miller calls Scully. He and Mulder are heading back to Washington, but Mulder’s condition is not good. There has been a run on gasoline, and they may have trouble getting back. Scully has a transfusion for Einstein. She will have the alien DNA, but everyone needs to have it to survive. O’Malley reports that systems are failing. There is a traffic jam in DC. Scully calls to the crown “get to the hospital, help is on its way.” She drives desperately to try to meet Miller and Mulder – on sidewalks, wrong ways on one-way streets, trying to thread past Scully runs through the streets and drives in the sidewalk, wrong way in streets. They are close together on the interstate bridges over the Potomac River (14th Street, US Highway 1, Interstate 395), but Scully cannot drive anymore because the bridge is blocked with vehicles. On foot, she runs between the vehicles, finally finding Miller and Mulder. Mulder is in bad shape and is semi-delirious. Apparently he is too sick. Scully is worried that the transfusion will not be enough and says that the only thing that might save him is stem cells from their son, William, but she does not know where William is. At this moment, an Alien Replica Vehicle (a triangular UFO based on alien technology) appears and hovers over them. A light beams directly down on Scully and Miller on the bridge pavement and Mulder inside the car. The last thing we see is Scully, looking upward toward the light. February 2016 My Struggle III. The episode begins with a narration by the Cigarette Smoking Man – his name is Carl Gerhart Bush, but he has been known by many names. He has been a witness to history and his has been a humbling job. If people knew the truth, they’d riot in the streets. He is not a bad man, but he is a practical man. He is father to two men, both FBI agents [Fox Mulder and Jeffry Spender], both complex but dedicated. The truth is only held by a few. He is an old man, but he will leave his own mark on history. His sons will know that their father did what had to be done. As the narration ends, we see Neil Armstrong on the Moon, but the camera pulls back and we see that it is a television studio, and the younger Smoking Man is present. Scully is being treated by paramedics in the X-Files office. She is undergoing seizures and having visions as the staff works on her, checking heart rate and blood pressure. Mulder thinks brought Scully, thinking that maybe she fell. Skinner arrives and accompanies Mulder to the hospital. A doctor there tells them that Scully seems to have had a seizure. They continue to work on Scully, and Mulder is agitated. He wants to know what is going on. The doctor says Scully is still unconscious and has highly abnormal brain activity, particularly in the hypothalamus, which controls the “fight or flight” reflex, although there has not been any actual damage. The doctor shows Mulder and Skinner real-time brain scans, and Skinner sees one spot flashing, as if in code. It reads “Find him.” Skinner feels it is clear that Scully wants to find William, but Mulder insists on staying. Mulder is waiting in Scully’s hospital room and we hear a narration about fear that the person you care for most could be hurt by you. He is concerned that he may have caused Scully’s seizures. She wakes up and sees him. She tells him she has seen the future, and viewers understand that most of last season’s finale episode did not really happen, but rather was a vision of Scully’s. She tells Mulder about the Spartan virus, but says she is certain there is a cure and that they have t find William. They need stem cells from him. She tells Mulder that the Smoking Man is in Spartanburg South Carolina. She insists that Mulder find the Smoking Man and stop him. That same evening, Jeffrey Spender enters the alley beside his apartment building to carry out a bag of garbage. A car attempts to run him down. Spender runs back to the locking door of his building and the driver pursues. Through the door, the driver shouts at him, “The boy, all we want is the boy.” Scully, Mulder, and her doctor talk. The doctor has seen experimentation by many governmental agencies and things that appear to be superhuman. She thinks that Scully’s visions have an outside source. Mulder says he’s on it. As Mulder approaches his car, a light silver late model Mustang, he gets a voicemail from Spender, telling him about the people looking for William. As Mulder drives off, he realizes that he is being followed (by a black 2014 Dodge Charger). Mulder races through traffic to try to lose his tail, and eventually does, but then he hides and he follows the Charger, all the way to South Carolina. Several scenes are cut back and forth in rapid succession. The Smoking Man knows about the attack on Spender, and says "they" will be coming for him. Monica Reyes tells the Smoking Man that Mulder is determined, but he replies that Mulder can’t stop what has already begun. He is concerned about Scully, and that the boy is in danger, but the Smoking Man does not know from whom. Monica says that maybe they know that William is the Smoking Man's weakness, but he counters that they could never know that, that only he and Monica know the connection between Scully and the Smoking Man. His plans, he says, are airtight, and even if they became known, they would be dismissed as fake news. He believes that Scully will come to see the beauty of his plan. Even though it means killing so many people, asks Monica? Mulder, Scully, and the boy are beyond science, he replies, and it is a secret only Monica and the Smoking Man know. The Smoking Man says he fears only for Scully and the boy. Monica says she thinks he loves Scully, and he replies that he always had Mulder to protect her. What if they find the boy first? You and I won't let that happen, the Smoking Man tells Monica. Meanwhile, Spender goes to Scully’s hospital room. He was the one who originally took William, to keep him safe, but all he has is a name of the adoptive parents: Van de Camp. Scully leaves the hospital and goes to the X-Files office, where she phones Mulder to tell him she has a name, but she has another vision, with flashes of the future, and passes out. Later Skinner finds her phone, but she is gone. We see her in a car, having seizures or blurred vision, and another vehicle hits hers. Passersby assist. The intercutting of scenes resumes as Mulder arrives at a resident in South Carolina, where he has followed the other car, and as the Smoking Man and Monica accost Skinner in his SUV. Inside the building, Mulder finds a man and woman, plus the Charger driver, but they are unknown and will not give their names. They claim to be part of the Syndicate involved in the alien colonization and they are looking for the Smoking Man because he is bent on exterminating humanity and they want Mulder to kill him. But the aliens are not coming. They have no interest in a warming planet with vanishing resources. The man and woman want to save humanity, to colonize space and do wonderful things with alien technology, but Mulder thinks they are only telling half the story. He thinks that it is a power play. He tells them that he knows someone who can save us, and they do, too, presumably meaning Scully. Back in his car, Mulder calls Skinner, but Skinner does not pick up. The Smoking Man is offering Skinner a deal. The aliens are not coming, he says, and he offers Skinner immunity from the Spartan virus if Skinner finds the boy. The aliens came to study us and offered to work with us, bringing technology, but they also brought the seeds of our destruction, he says. The only truth left is to survive. He tells Skinner that Scully and William have immunity. Skinner asks if Mulder does, but there is no answer. Skinner thinks Scully will never accept the Smoking Man’s offer, but the Smoking Man says that for Scully, it will be a choice between her son and Mulder. He says he has a history with Dana that goes back 17 years. Scully is back in the hospital. Einstein and Miller are in the hall. They were pulling into the FBI when they saw her car get hit. They knew where to bring her because of her medical bracelet. The doctor phones Mulder to tell here that Scully is back in the hospital. The Charger driver enters Scully’s room and attempts to smother her with a pillow, but she struggles. At the last moment, Mulder arrives, grabs a scalpel, and cuts the man’s throat. We hear another Mulder narration asking if he has come full circle, discovering two conspiracies, not just one, both threatening William? Mulder and Scully talk. She knows that the Smoking Man did not send her assailant and will will not harm her. Mulder is convinced that her visions are true. Scully is convinced that they are from William. She doesn’t know how he is guiding both of them, but she knows that he will find them. We wait and do nothing, Mulder asks? We do our work; the truth still lies in the X-Files, she replies. Skinner arrives and Mulder is suspicious. Skinner smells like smoke, and Mulder wants to know what he is hiding. We see a flashback to the episode En Ami, in the spring of 2000, when the Smoking Man cured Scully of cancer. That is also when she became pregnant, with what the Smoking Man of today says was the first superhuman child, accomplished, he says, with science, alien science. Skinner asks "who's the father?" “I am. William is my son,” the Smoking Man says. The final scene is a veiled view of a young man, William, underging mental stress, presumably as he transmits to Scully. Note: The opening credits of this episode contain the dual taglines "I want to believe" and "I want to lie." January 2018? This. We learn that Richard “Ringo” Langly, one of the Lone Gunmen who died many years earlier, was once approached by representatives of a secret project with a plan that would allow him to live forever. His assimilated self would be uploaded into a server bank and wake up after he actually died. Langly accepted and manages to communicate with Mulder through a cellular phone. January or February 2018? Ghouli. Mulder and Scully make contact with their son, William, who had been given up for adoption as a young child. He is on the run because he has powers, including the power to make himself to visually appear to be a different person. 2018, Spring? My Struggle IV. The episode begins with a narration by Jackson Van De Kamp, aka William Mulder. He was adopted 17 years ago and knows that Dana Scully is his mother and he can sense her. He does not know his role in the future but he has visions of it. He has always known he had special powers, which sometimes caused problems. When he was sent away to a school for bad kids, he told the psychologists what they wanted to hear, but back home, there were guys watching their house and his parents were killed. “They” are hunting him now. When he needs most now is answers, and he can only get them from his father. The narration ends with a vision of the Cigarette Smoking Man shooting Mulder in the head. At Norfolk Virginia, Mulder arrives at a cheap motel and the clerk directs him to a room and Mulder knocks. But later, Kersh is telling Skinner that Tad O’Malley is going on and on about conspiracy and Mulder is the source. Kersh is closing the X-Files and tells Skinner to take the FBI badges from Mulder and Scully. Outside Kersh’s office, Skinner receives a call from the Smoking Man. The contagion is about to begin and the boy must be found. But Scully approaches Skinner – Mulder is with their son and is being pursued. She needs Skinner’s help. Skinner mentions Tad O’Malley, but Scully vows that she is O’Malley’s source. Scully has a lengthy vision of things that have happened, beginning 15 hours earlier. Monica Reyes calls to report that Jackson is in Tennessee, but on a private jet to Maryland. Scully believes that he is NOT on the jet, but Mulder rushes off and finds the plane as it lands. Only Mr. Y (from My Struggle III) and guards get off. Mr. Y goes to an upstairs office, through a hangar that appears to have an unknown spacecraft in it. Mulder distracts the guards to slip in, but is caught and kills them in a struggle and gun fight. Upstairs, Mulder has a gun on Mr. Y, who says that they could not catch Mulder’s son, and that Jackson has what everybody wants, what they would kill for. Another guard tries to break into the office. Mr Y pulls a gun and Mulder kills them both, then flees the scene. Jackson is in an abandoned factory and is chased by commandos, but he eludes them. Scully calls Mulder to report eight recent lottery winners clustered in Tennessee. Mulder drives there and talks to the convenience store clerk. The boy who won gave the numbers confidently then came back this morning. Mulder sees on surveillance video that it was Jackson/William, but while he is busy, a man puts a tracking device on Mulder’s car. Scully has a vision and Mulder confirms from security video that Jackson has hitched a ride on a semi-truck headed northeast, so Mulder gives chase. Jackson has scared the semi-truck driver with a vision of a monster and escaped the truck before Mulder flags it down, hiding in a culvert nearby. The car following Mulder’s tracking device drives up and offers Jackson a ride to Norfolk. Scully calls Tad O’Malley about the virus that is about to be unleashed. She will be cited as a federal agent source. The car of the man with the tracking device has been found, on Norfolk and the insides of the car are covered with the exploded blood and entrails of the driver, but the tracking device is stil working. Jackson visits Sarah, Jackson’s girlfriend (from Ghouli). He can’t live like this and wants her to come with him because he is so sick of being alone, but she declines, agreeing instead to meet him at the Timberland Motel. But Mulder also comes to Sarah’s door and pleads with her to help him find his son. We do not hear what she says, but in the next scene, Mulder is approaching Room 7 of the motel. After persuasion, Jackson allows him in and Mulder hugs him, promising to keep him safe, but Jackson is not convinced. He is a danger and "they" will never stop coming for him. He thinks maybe he needs to die to escape them. There is an implication that maybe they need Jackson to make the contagion work, but this is not clear. A SWAT team has followed the tracker to Mulder's car and bursts in, taking Mulder and Jackson captive, but Jackson explodes the SWAT team members and runs. Mulder follows, cannot find him, and leaves the scene, captured in video used by Tad O'Mally (which Kersh sees). Mulder calls to tell Scully what happened and she promises to come to Norfolk, convinced that Jackson will listen to her. The lengthy flashback or vision ends and Scully persuades Skinner to help. O'Mally goes live with the story of the military assault at the motel. The two are on their way to Norfolk at night when Skinner confesses what the Smoking Man told him about being Jackson’s father, and Scully is shocked. Sarah has told Mulder that Jackson might go to the old sugar factory at the harbor and Mulder heads that way at high speed. Scully and Skinner catch sight of him and follow. Mulder is already inside the factory and Scully follows, but Skinner sees a car observing the scene and investigates. Inside are the Smoking Man and Monica. The Smoking Man floors the accelerator to run down Skinner. Skinner fires, hitting Monica in the forehead, and then runs from the car, diving under another car as the two vehicles strike, leaving him unconscious or dead. The Smoking Man emerges and takes Skinners handgun, entering the factory himself. Mulder and Scully talk, but it is Jackson masquerading as Mulder when he tells Scully that noone can protect Jackson But the real Mulder runs up and Jackson flees and they cannot catch him. A short time later, outside near the wharf, Jackson again masquerading as Mulder encounters the Smoking Man. He needs the boy, and he is his creator. He never thought that he would kill his son, referring to Mulder, but he shoots Jackson/Mulder in the forehead and Jackson/Mulder falls backwards into the water. Moments later, the real Mulder runs up, and immediately shoots the Smoking Man several times, his body falls into the water, and is drawn away by the current. Scully runs up and Mulder tells her that the Smoking man shot Jackson. Jackson/William wasn’t really meant to be, she says. He was an idea, born in a laboratory, not really their son. She bore him but was never a mother to him. Mulder questions what he is now, if he is not a father. Scully proclaims that Mulder IS a father and holds his hand to her stomach, indicating that she is pregnant. That’s impossible, Mulder says, and Scully says it is more than impossible. They hug and cry as the camera zooms out. Just as the episode ends, Jackson’s head surfaces. Jackson/William is alive.     The End, for now.....