The X-Files 4x24

1. Each passing year has seen

2. our estimate of the probability of life in space increase,

3. along with our capabilities of detecting it.

4. More and more scientists feel that contact

5. with other civilizations

6. is no longer something beyond our dreams,

7. but is a natural event in the history of mankind

8. that will perhaps occur within the lifetime of many of us.

9. Oh, excuse me.

10. Make way.

11. Let her through.

12. Agent Scully?

13. Detective Rempulski, Alexandria PD.

14. Thanks for coming down to do this.

15. It him?

16. Yeah.

17. Agent Scully, please have a seat.

18. Agent Scully, we've had a brief discussion,

19. but will you restate the matter we're here to put to rest?

20. Yes, sir.

21. Four years ago,

22. Section Chief Blevins assigned me

23. Section Chief Blevins assigned me

24. to a project you all know as the X Files.

25. As I am a medical doctor

26. with a background in hard science,

27. my job was to provide an analytical perspective

28. on the work of Special Agent Fox Mulder,

29. whose investigations into the paranormal

30. were fueled by a personal belief

31. that his sister had been abducted by aliens

32. when he was 12.

33. I come here today, four years later,

34. I come here today, four years later,

35. to report on the illegitimacy of Agent Mulder's work.

36. That it is my scientific opinion

37. that he became over the course of these years a victim—

38. a victim of his own false hopes

39. and of his belief in the biggest of lies.

40. We're meeting the guide at base camp.

41. He'll take us to the site.

42. Has he seen it?

43. Oh, yeah.

44. He said it's unbelievable.

45. How soon can we get to the site?

46. Right now, we'd be pushing it

47. to be on top by nightfall.

48. I'd rather sleep seeing it

49. than lay awake all night wondering.

50. It'll take some work.

51. I've waited all my life for this day.

52. Let's do it.

53. Over here.

54. How you doing?

55. My God.

56. It's beautiful.

57. Agent Scully, I presume you have a basis

58. for this break from Agent Mulder.

59. Yes, sir.

60. Recent events have shed new light

61. on the factual and physical evidence

62. that would serve to prove the existence

63. of extraterrestrial life,

64. which is the foundation of Agent Mulder's

65. consuming devotion to his work.

66. What factual evidence?

67. Agent Mulder was recently contacted by a man

68. Agent Mulder was recently contacted by a man

69. whose pursuit of this evidence seemed to coincide with his own.

70. In his intense

71. desire to believe,

72. Agent Mulder was duped by this man.

73. He was fooled by an act of scientific sleight of hand

74. calculated to perpetuate false truths—

75. the larger lie.

76. I am here today to expose this lie,

77. to show the mechanism of deception

78. that drew him and me into it,

79. that drew him and me into it,

80. and to expose Agent Mulder's work for what it is.

81. remembered it myself,

82. but something about me standing— I was, like,

83. a two-and-a-half-year-old— behind him on the stairs

84. and grabbing him by the knees,

85. and then him falling backwards

86. tumbling over me and down the stairs.

87. Hi.

88. Speaking of Bill— is he coming?

89. Good evening. May I take your coat?

90. Thank you. Thank you.

91. There he is.

92. (laughs): Hi.

93. Hello, Dana.

94. Look at you.

95. Look at you, my big brother.

96. I'm sorry I'm late.

97. My ship got stuck in traffic.

98. Did you get my birthday card?

99. Yes, I did. Thanks for remembering this year.

100. Once a decade.

101. Father McCue. Oh.

102. Been waiting for you.

103. How you feeling, Dana?

104. I'm fine.

105. Let's get some dinner, huh?

106. Yeah, I'm starving.

107. Everything's ready. Oh.

108. Everything's ready. Oh.

109. So the parrot says, "I only got one question.

110. What did that chicken in there do?"

111. Mom, I'll open some more wine.

112. Okay.

113. I feel awkward sitting here.

114. I feel awkward sitting here.

115. I'm sure you do, too.

116. No. I'm sorry.

117. I've known your family

118. for so many years.

119. Your mother asked me to come,

120. that I might have a word with you.

121. I know it's been some time

122. since we've spoken ourselves,

123. since you drifted from the church...

124. Father McCue...

125. But in time of personal crisis,

126. a threat to your health,

127. turning back to your faith is important

128. and essential.

129. Father McCue...

130. I appreciate my mother's concern...

131. I appreciate my mother's concern...

132. and yours, but I'm being treated for my cancer

133. and I'm taking every precaution.

134. Faith can make you stronger.

135. I haven't felt a need.

136. Um... I have strength.

137. And...

138. And I'm not going to come running back now.

139. It's just not who I am.

140. I'd be lying to myself and to you.

141. Dana.

142. Dana.

143. Phone.

144. Excuse me.

145. Hello?

146. Hey, Scully, it's me.

147. Sorry to interrupt your dinner.

148. No, uh... is something the matter?

149. I need your help on something.

150. Somebody named Arlinsky

151. just contacted me over at the Smithsonian.

152. Contacted you about what?

153. About something he found on a mountain in Canada.

154. What?

155. I'd rather not to talk about it over the phone.

156. I'd rather not to talk about it over the phone.

157. I just need you to meet me over at the Smithsonian.

158. When?

159. Right away.

160. I'm on my way.

161. I'm going to have to apologize to your brother and mother.

162. This is something that just couldn't wait though.

163. It's okay.

164. Who's this Arlinsky?

165. He's a forensics anthropologist

166. that I've been in contact with over the past four years.

167. that I've been in contact with over the past four years.

168. Several years ago, he was involved

169. in an embarrassing UFO photo enhancement scandal,

170. but he continues to profess his innocence.

171. What am I coming to see?

172. I'm not going to tell you.

173. I want you to decide for yourself.

174. By my rough estimate

175. from the sediment in our ice core samples,

176. the body you're looking at is over 200 years old.

177. It looks perfectly intact. Yeah.

178. That doesn't make sense.

179. There would've been signs of predation.

180. Yeah, but the position he was found in—

181. stuffed in a crevice at high altitude,

182. stuffed in a crevice at high altitude,

183. he may have frozen fast enough to avoid being eaten.

184. Does that fit geologically?

185. The area where he was found

186. is in the terminal moraine of a glacier

187. which has since receded.

188. 200 years ago, the area where he was frozen

189. was within the tree line, so there would have been a thaw.

190. Who found him?

191. A Canadian geodetic survey team.

192. Uh, there...

193. Along with a colleague of mine named Babcock.

194. They're all still up there

195. on the mountain.

196. Who else knows about this?

197. No one.

198. No one.

199. I know what your first thought was, but the Saint Elias Range?

200. That's a long way to go for a hoax.

201. Well, if you're going to go, why not go all the way?

202. Well, I'm circumspect myself,

203. but the ice core samples I took— they can't be faked.

204. You have the ice core samples here?

205. Yeah. Yeah.

206. One taken from each side of the body.

207. A 360-degree matching integrity of sediment.

208. A 360-degree matching integrity of sediment.

209. It's my sincere belief that what we have here

210. is the complete corpus

211. of an extraterrestrial biological entity.

212. Absolute and irrefutable.

213. Qualitatively indefensible.

214. You go public with this, and nobody's going to believe you.

215. You also risk never knowing for sure, because the same people

216. who buried the truth so assiduously

217. will be in charge of its authentication.

218. That's why I came to you.

219. I need to get the specimen out so I can authenticate it.

220. This body means everything to you,

221. This body means everything to you,

222. Agent Mulder.

223. You're going to have the proof in your hands.

224. And what do you want?

225. We just want the credit.

226. You think it's foolish.

227. I have no opinion, actually.

228. You have no opinion?

229. This is your holy grail, Mulder, not mine.

230. What is that supposed to mean?

231. It just means that proving to the world

232. the existence of alien life is not my last dying wish.

233. How about Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny?

234. This is not some selfish pet project of mine, Scully.

235. I'm as skeptical of that man as you are,

236. but proof, definitive proof of sentient beings

237. sharing time and existence with us—

238. that would change everything.

239. Every truth we live by would be shaken to the ground.

240. There is no greater revelation imaginable,

241. no greater scientific discovery.

242. You already believe, Mulder.

243. What difference will it make?

244. I mean, what will proof change for you?

245. If someone could prove to you the existence of God,

246. would it change you?

247. would it change you?

248. Only if it had been disproven.

249. Then you accept the possibility that belief in God is a lie?

250. I don't think about it, actually.

251. And I don't think that it can be proven.

252. But what if it could be?

253. Wouldn't that knowledge be worth seeking?

254. Or is it just easier to go on believing the lie?

255. I can't go with you, Mulder.

256. Well, can you at least take a look at those core samples

257. and tell me if they're a lie?

258. That's all I'm asking.

259. What I couldn't tell Agent Mulder,

260. what I had only just learned myself,

261. was that the cancer which had been diagnosed in me

262. several months earlier had metastasized.

263. And the doctors told me,

264. short of a miracle,

265. it would continue to aggressively invade my body,

266. advancing faster each day towards the inevitable.

267. What's that for?

268. I don't know these men well.

269. Do you?

270. Well enough.

271. I'm going to be up here alone

272. till you get back.

273. I hope I don't have to use it.

274. I think you better have a look at this.

275. We were doing a lateral cut to the back corner

276. We were doing a lateral cut to the back corner

277. when I saw something in the ice.

278. Right here.

279. What do you think that is?

280. I don't know.

281. It could be a bubble, a weak spot.

282. Or a casting channel, a pour hole—

283. liquid poured in from the side or above somehow.

284. Poured from where?

285. Poured from where?

286. I don't know.

287. The angle wouldn't make sense.

288. Yeah. You're right.

289. We'll never know until we get it out of there.

290. The ion concentration, density and temperature profiles

291. are all consistent.

292. There's a tight matrix of crystals

293. at about proximal center,

294. suggesting the quick-freezing scenario you mentioned.

295. Here at the terminus,

296. you've got some particulate hydrocarbons—

297. jet fuel pollutants found just about everywhere in the world.

298. But not in old ice?

299. Don't misunderstand.

300. Don't misunderstand.

301. This is old ice.

302. This sample has numerous layers of sedimentation,

303. like the rings on a tree, essentially.

304. So it hasn't been tampered with?

305. No. Not from what I can see here.

306. Can I ask why it is you're testing this ice?

307. Uh, another agent asked me to.

308. Do you know where this sample came from?

309. From a site in the Yukon territory.

310. Why?

311. There's some...

312. cellular material within the matrix.

313. Plant or animal?

314. I don't know.

315. I don't know.

316. It's what I'd have to classify a chimera—

317. a hybrid cell.

318. From what?

319. As I said, I don't know.

320. Is it capable of cell division?

321. I don't know that either. I've just now found them.

322. I'd like to get them under our electron microscope,

323. if that's okay.

324. Yes, please.

325. What's going on?

326. I thought you said there was

327. someone meeting us.

328. Yeah, a guide named Rolston.

329. I don't get it.

330. This had all been arranged.

331. He knew he was supposed to take us up to the summit.

332. I don't know what to do.

333. We can probably follow this track right up to the site.

334. Maybe we'll meet him on the way down.

335. Funny place to take a nap.

336. He's been shot.

337. Oh, my God.

338. It's our guide?

339. Yeah.

340. Excuse me.

341. I'm looking for Dr. Vitagliano.

342. Dr. Vitagliano— is he here?

343. Uh, no, I'm afraid not.

344. I, uh, I was supposed to meet him here actually.

345. I'm-I'm a little late.

346. Sorry.

347. Oh, my God!

348. They're all dead. They've been shot.

349. Babcock!

350. The body.

351. It's gone. They took it!

352. No one knew.

353. We didn't tell a soul.

354. They had radio communication.

355. Maybe it was being monitored... Shh.

356. Someone's still alive.

357. It's Babcock.

358. Give him some water.

359. Looks like he took a shotgun hit,

360. but it didn't open him up too badly.

361. The bleeding's stopped.

362. Who did this?

363. There you go.

364. They took the body, Babcock.

365. No.

366. I buried it.

367. Where?

368. Dana?

369. Bill.

370. What are you doing here?

371. I picked up the phone when they called Mom's.

372. Said you could use a change of clothes.

373. Thank you.

374. Um, where's Mom?

375. I didn't tell Mom what happened.

376. So, what did happen?

377. I, uh... was knocked down a flight of stairs.

378. But I'm okay, luckily.

379. You're not okay, Dana.

380. I know about your cancer.

381. I told Mom not to tell you.

382. Why?

383. Because it's very personal.

384. Because it's very personal.

385. Because I don't want sympathy.

386. You think you can cure yourself.

387. Mom tells me that

388. you've gotten worse—

389. that your cancer's gone into your bloodstream.

390. What are you doing at work getting knocked down

391. and beaten up? What are you trying to prove?

392. That you're going to go out fighting?

393. Oh, now, come on, Bill.

394. Do you know what Mom is going through?

395. Do you know what Mom is going through?

396. Why do you think I didn't tell her when they called?

397. What should I be doing?

398. We have a responsibility

399. not just to ourselves, but to the people in our lives.

400. Hey, look, just-just because I haven't bared my soul to you

401. or to Father McCue or to God,

402. it doesn't mean that I'm not responsible

403. to what's important to me.

404. To what?

405. To who?

406. This guy Mulder?

407. Well, where is he, Dana?

408. Where is he through all this?

409. Thank you for coming.

410. Dana...

411. We should be able to do

412. a good enough examination of the body right here

413. to remove any doubt.

414. to remove any doubt.

415. We won't know for sure until we do a carbon-dating test.

416. I'm anticipating his physiology alone is going to be telltale.

417. The Piltdown Man hoax wasn't uncovered for 40 years,

418. until it failed a carbon-dating test,

419. and that wasn't even very good.

420. If this were a hoax,

421. would we have six dead men

422. up on that mountain?

423. Now, somebody other than us

424. sure as hell believes it's not.

425. As you can imagine,

426. that's a fairly heavily trafficked stairwell.

427. So we went back to the bio-lab

428. where we found an anomalous set of latents.

429. where we found an anomalous set of latents.

430. Found a partial matching in the stairwell

431. four centimeters from one of yours.

432. Have you run it through the NCIC?

433. Yeah. This is your assailant.

434. Unfortunately, he doesn't have a criminal record.

435. Try the federal database.

436. I'll be damned.

437. How'd you know he'd be a government employee?

438. Where does he work?

439. Right here in Washington.

440. Right here in Washington.

441. Michael Kritschgau,

442. formerly of the U.S. Army, now attached

443. to the Pentagon's research division in Virginia.

444. Is this the man?

445. Body is 147 centimeters long,

446. Body is 147 centimeters long,

447. weighing 24 kilograms, deliquesced.

448. Derma is hairless,

449. gray with an elephantine texture, with no odor.

450. There are some small eruptions

451. on the surface of the skin,

452. most likely due to the presence of iron phosphate in the ice.

453. Otherwise, there appears to be

454. Otherwise, there appears to be

455. no scarring and no identifying marks.

456. The circumference of the head

457. is 64 centimeters.

458. There are four digits

459. on each hand and three on each foot.

460. Sex is indeterminate.

461. The eyes are lidless,

462. black...

463. covered by what appears to be a thin membrane

464. which I am now...

465. removing.

466. The tissue underneath...

467. The tissue underneath...

468. seems to be semi-gelatinous

469. with a... fine network of veins running throughout.

470. Examination of the chest cavity confirms the presence

471. of what appears to be a cardiopulmonary system,

472. heart and lungs all identifiable

473. within a mass of white, string-like tissue

474. that doesn't appear to correspond to human physiology.

475. Stop! Federal agent!

476. Hold it!

477. Michael Kritschgau!

478. You are under arrest!

479. Identify your location!

480. Get out of the car!

481. Now!

482. Move!

483. Please, don't shoot.

484. Please, don't shoot.

485. I didn't mean to hurt you.

486. I had no choice.

487. Put your hands on the car!

488. If you arrest me,

489. they'll kill me.

490. I don't know what you're talking about!

491. The same people who are trying to kill you.

492. The people who gave you your cancer.

493. There's tissue culturing to be done,

494. There's tissue culturing to be done,

495. DNA sequence and an analysis,

496. and we'd be wise to run a gas chromatograph

497. and that carbon-dating you suggested,

498. but if this isn't alien, I don't know what it is.

499. Mulder.

500. I had reached Agent Mulder

501. in a warehouse just outside of Washington

502. in Sethburg, Virginia.

503. They had managed the frozen corpse

504. by helicopter down the side of the mountain

505. and across the Canadian border in a refrigerated truck.

506. and across the Canadian border in a refrigerated truck.

507. After conducting a limited physical examination,

508. Agent Mulder was ready to believe

509. that the body was that

510. of an extraterrestrial biological entity,

511. that he had

512. finally found the proof which had eluded him,

513. which would confirm

514. not only the existence of alien life,

515. but of his sister Samantha's abduction.

516. But this man Kritschgau had convinced you otherwise.

517. How?

518. He told me a story

519. which detailed, point by point, the systematic way

520. which detailed, point by point, the systematic way

521. in which Agent Mulder had been deceived and used,

522. and how I

523. as his partner, had been led down the same path.

524. Losing a family member due to my allegiance

525. and contracting a fatal disease,

526. which I was being told was engineered by the men

527. who were responsible for Agent Mulder's deception.

528. Were you able

529. to convince Agent Mulder of these facts?

530. I was only able

531. to convince him to meet me

532. so that he might hear the story the way I had.

533. so that he might hear the story the way I had.

534. Who the hell is this?

535. Right there, pork.

536. How's the wound?

537. I'll live.

538. What is this, Babcock?

539. What is this, Babcock?

540. Get the door.

541. Where did Mulder go?

542. He got a call.

543. Is he a believer?

544. Is he a believer?

545. Oh, yeah.

546. Then we're the only ones who know.

547. Right.

548. The lie you believe,

549. that they have cleverly led you to believe, Agent Mulder,

550. is that there is intelligent life other than our own

551. and that we have had contact with these life-forms.

552. So you're saying this has all been orchestrated—

553. a hoax?

554. Which you've been used to perpetuate.

555. You come by this knowledge how?

556. Working for the D.O.D.

557. Watching a military- industrial complex

558. that operated unbridled and unchecked during the Cold War

559. create a diversion of attention from itself

560. and its continued misdeeds

561. by confabulating enough believable evidence

562. to convince passionate adepts like yourself

563. that it really could be true.

564. And just by chance you run into Agent Scully?

565. That's just like you, Agent Mulder—

566. suspicious of everything but what you should be.

567. I ran the D.O.D.'s agitprop arm for a decade.

568. I can show you records of disinformation

569. dating back to the Korean War, before you were even born.

570. Why come to me now? Why not four years ago?

571. I have a son who's very sick.

572. He served in the Gulf War.

573. He served in the Gulf War.

574. The lies are so deep, the only way to cover them

575. is to create something even more incredible.

576. They invented you.

577. Your regression hypnosis,

578. the story of your sister's abduction,

579. the lies they fed your father.

580. You wanted to believe so badly.

581. And who could have blamed you?

582. And the thousands of UFO sightings?

583. Above top-secret military aircraft

584. Above top-secret military aircraft

585. concept-designed to feed hysteria.

586. Evidence of alien biology?

587. Unclassified,

588. but naturally occurring biologic anomalies

589. science will eventually explain.

590. The body that was found?

591. Meticulously constructed out of bio-materials

592. created through the hybridization

593. of differentiated cells— what are called chimeras.

594. Frozen into place over the course of a year, using sediment

595. and materials that would bear out its age.

596. Poured through a small channel drilled in the rock above.

597. Poured through a small channel drilled in the rock above.

598. They would've known that the body would be carbon-dated,

599. that it would be proved a fake.

600. The body will never be tested, Agent Mulder.

601. What do you mean?

602. You were only meant to see it

603. to make you believe the lie

604. so that you might finally commit

605. and go public with the news.

606. This man is a liar.

607. You can see for yourself, Agent Mulder.

608. The body is already long gone.

609. The body is already long gone.

610. Dr. Arlinsky?

611. It's gone.

612. Mulder.

613. What?

614. It's Arlinsky.

615. He's dead.

616. So is this man.

617. Who did this, Mulder?

618. Mulder?

619. What we had here was proof, Scully.

620. There's no way it could be anything else.

621. There's no way it could be anything else.

622. You said it yourself, Mulder—

623. more tests needed to be run.

624. Yeah, but the ice core samples checked out.

625. If the ice hasn't been tampered with,

626. how could the body within be a fake?

627. Cellular material found in the ice core samples

628. were a direct match for what this man Kritschgau described.

629. Hybrid cells—

630. chimeras within the matrix.

631. Do we know for sure that those cells are not extraterrestrial?

632. Mulder, everything this man described—

633. you can't just guess at these details.

634. I'm sorry, but the facts here

635. completely overwhelm any argument against them.

636. Facts overwhelmed by the lies created to support them.

637. Facts overwhelmed by the lies created to support them.

638. Mulder, the only lie here is the one

639. that you continue to believe.

640. After all I've seen and experienced,

641. I refuse to believe that it's not true.

642. Because it's easier to believe the lie,

643. isn't it?

644. What the hell did that guy say to you

645. that you believe his story?

646. He said that the men behind this hoax,

647. behind these lies,

648. gave me this disease to make you believe.

649. gave me this disease to make you believe.

650. what we generally mean is, of course, intelligent life,

651. something resembling our noble selves.

652. It is highly probable

653. that there are such intelligent forms of life

654. in other galaxies in the universe.

655. in other galaxies in the universe.

656. And it is even more probable that many of these forms

657. are vastly more intelligent than we.

658. I think there's no question

659. but that we live in an inhabited universe

660. that has life all over it.

661. By finding out

662. what the other planets are like,

663. by finding out whether there are civilizations

664. on planets of other stars,

665. we reestablish a meaningful context for ourselves.

666. we reestablish a meaningful context for ourselves.

667. I don't think we should wait

668. until the encounter occurs,

669. but that we should do all in our power

670. to prepare ourselves for it.

671. I can conceive of no nightmare as terrifying

672. as establishing such communication

673. with a so-called superior or, if you wish,

674. advance technology in outer space.

675. Early this morning, I got a call from the police

676. Early this morning, I got a call from the police

677. asking me to come to Agent Mulder's apartment.

678. The detective asked me...

679. He needed me to identify a body.

680. Agent Scully...

681. Agent Mulder died late last night

682. Agent Mulder died late last night

683. from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

684. I made this!