Página PrincipalInternal Dating: None given. Episode aired May 16th 1999
"From space it seem an abstraction, a magician's trick on a darkened stage. And from this distance one might never imagine it is alive.
"It first appeared in the sea, almost four billion years ago, in the form of single-celled life. In an explosion of life spanning millions of years, nature's first multi-cellular organisms began to multiply. And then it stopped. Four hundred forty million years ago, a great mass extinction would kill off almost every species living on the planet, leaving the vast oceans decimated and empty. Slowly, plants began to evolve, then insects, only to be wiped out in the second great mass extinction upon the earth. The cycle repeated again and again, with reptiles emerging independent of the sea, only to be killed off. Then dinosaurs, struggling to life, along with the first birds, fish and flowering plants, their decimations earth's fourth and fifth great extinctions.
"Only one hundred thousand years ago, homo sapiens appeared. Man. From cave paintings to the Bible, to Columbus and Apollo 11, we have been a tireless force upon the earth and off, cataloguing the natual world as it unfolds to us; rising to a world population of over five billion people, all descended from that original single cell, that first spark of life.
"But for all our knowledge, what no one can say for certain is what, or who, ignited that original spark. Is there a plan, a purpose or reason to our existence? Will we pass as those before us into oblivion, into the sixth great extinction that scientists warn is already in progress?"
Along the Ivory Coast, natives find a shard of artifact, with bizarre writing on it. A young man bends down and picks it up.
The credits roll: The Truth Is Out There
Ivory Coast, Africa Professor Solomon Merkmallen looks at the artifact in his study. He already has one piece of it, and when he places the two of them side by side, the pieces fly off his desk and around the room. They imbed themselves in a bookshelf, impaling a Bible. When Merkmallen retrieves the book, he sees that both pieces are now fused together into one single component. He pulls it out of the book, noting the page it is on. It is a passage from Genesis 1:28.
"And God blessed them and and God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."
The artifact begins spinning crazily on the table, and Merkmallen slams his hand down on top of it to stop it. He wraps it up and places an international call.
Merkmallen calls a professor at American University in Washington, a man named Steven Sandoz. Sandoz has a piece of the artifact as well. The two men subscribe to a theory called "panspermia" which says that many eons ago, there was life on other planets, such as Mars. Cosmic collisions threw microbes of that life into outer space, and eventually into our own atmosphere, thus creating life on this planet.
Merkmallen flies to DC and heads to American University. He finds Sandoz' lab and talks to the man who greets him. The other man is strangely silent, and Merkmallen realizes too late that this is not Sandoz. The other man kills him and flees. Sandoz enters his lab and sees the body, then he himself runs off.
In Washington, Skinner gives the case to Mulder and Scully, on the grounds that Sandoz' personal beliefs are on a par with Mulder's. Skinner tells them that Merkmallen is assumed dead, that his body is missing, but enough blood was found at the scene of the crime to be pretty sure he is dead. He mentions the panspermia theory, which Scully has also heard of. Skinner asks if she accepts this as plausible. Scully replies, "Well, almost any scientist would, theoretically." She however, clearly does not believe it.
Scully wonders aloud if Merkmallen's belief in the panspermia theory got him killed. Skinner says that the professor had found a piece of an artifact, then hands her a rubbing of it. The AD says that Merkmallen claimed the writing on it was a message that explained all of human life. Scully looks at the rubbing, then gives it to Mulder. Mulder says that Sandoz published a similar claim based on his piece of the artifact in a science journal then tells her that Sandoz is missing, too.
Mulder and Scully leave Skinner's office, with the rubbing. While they are in the elevator, Scully speaks to Mulder. Instead of hearing her, however, all he hears is a high-pitched resonance, overlaid with voices speaking, although nothing coherent can be made out. The elevator stops and Scully says, "Mulder, did you hear a word I said?"
He says, "No."
She sighs. "Maybe you didn't want to hear it."
"No," Mulder murmurs, "I couldn't hear it." He hands her the rubbing and gets off the elevator.
Scully then repeats her question. "Mulder, look. After all you've done, after all you've uncovered; a conspiracy of men doing human experiments, men who are all now dead. You exposed their secrets. I mean, you've won. What more could you possibly hope to do or to find?"
Mulder gives her a sad look. "My sister," he says.
Mulder and Scully go to American University, to Sandoz' lab. Police are there, and Scully speaks with a detective who tells her that the murder weapon has been found, and fingerprints that are probably Sandoz'. Mulder speaks to a man named Barnes, the head of the department. This is the same man who met with Merkmallen, pretending to be Sandoz.
Scully walks up to them. Barnes says that Sandoz' notes are full of information about a West African artifact, but that it is missing, along with Sandoz. Scully says, "You mean this?" and holds out the rubbing. Barnes takes it, says that Sandoz believed the writing on the tablet was alien. Shortly after, Mulder begins hearing the voices again. He reaches up and rubs at his temple, then abruptly leaves the room. Scully stays behind, talking to Barnes. He has nothing but contempt for Sandoz, calling him a "pseudo-scientist" who was happy to be published in the tabloids.
Scully leaves the lab and finds Mulder in the hall. He seems better. He tells her he is hearing a hollow noise in his head, and that he thinks it has something to do with the rubbing. Scully takes it out and says, "You're kidding." Mulder instantly seems to regress a bit, and Scully says, "You're serious. But it's just a piece of paper."
Back at the FBI Building, Scully has called Dr. Charles Burk, who helped them out during the Calisari case, and who did the aural photography of Leonard Betts' head. Burk is pleased to see Mulder again. He and Scully have done some research into the case. Scully has told Burk about how the rubbing is affecting Mulder. Burk gets Mulder to repeat his symptoms--that hollow noise and aural dissonance--and how it affects him and not Scully, and is triggered by the rubbing. "Wow," Burk says, "that blows me away."
"Why?" Mulder asks.
"Because the rubbing is a fake," Scully replies. "And I'm not the first one to say so."
"The writing is pre-phonetic Navajo," Burk says, "but no literal interpretation makes any sense."
Burk says it's suspicious, then puts up a transparency of a magic square. He says the story behind them is that God gave instructions to Adam on how to use them, and the secret was passed down to saints and prophets through the centuries. They are used to trap and store potential power for the person whose name or numerical co-relative exercises that power.
"That's what this thing is?" Mulder asks, skeptically.
"That's what someone would have you believe," Scully replies. She puts up a transparency of an article Barnes wrote, discrediting Sandoz. It claims Sandoz manufactured the artifact himself.
If it's real, Scully argues, why would an American Indian artifact be found in Africa? Mulder counters that by saying that in 1996 a Mars rock was found in Antarctica. "How did it get there?"
"It came from outer space," Scully says.
Mulder throws up his hands as if to say, You see?
Burk puts the rubbing back up. Mulder winces and clutches at his head. Concerned, Scully takes him into the hall, and the effect stops. She tries to get Mulder to go home and rest, and says she wants to schedule him an imaging exam. He refuses. "I think I know what's causing this. And I think I know what happened to those two professors and the artifact," he says. "I got a sense of it yesterday when I met that man Barnes." To prove it, he intends to show Scully where Merkmallen's body is.
The two agents go to Sandoz' apartment, where they search around. In the closet Mulder finds luggage with old airport tags on them for Gallup, New Mexico. When he shows them to Scully, she is unsurprised. She has spotted a photograph on the wall of Sandoz and Albert Hosteen. Mulder says Sandoz was using him "to translate the symbols on the artifact."
Scully says, "Or to write them." She then challenges Mulder to show her Merkmallen's body. Mulder takes her into the kitchen, where what is left of the professor's body has been stashed in the trash compactor under the sink.
Back at the FBI, Scully and Mulder meet with Skinner in his office. They sit at the conference table. Mulder is suffering--he speaks in a low monotone, eyes closed, head bowed, unable to look up without wincing. Skinner slides a photo of Sandoz forward. "So you think Sandoz is innocent?" He pushes the rubbing forward next. "And this?"
"Genuine artifact," Mulder says. "One of several pieces of an unknown whole." He says that Merkmallen's body was disposed of so as to incriminate Sandoz, then cannot continue speaking. He asks Scully to deliver the medical report.
Scully says that part of Merkmallen's body were missing, parts that would show radiation. On Mulder's urging, she had tested tissue from the body, and it showed CGR: Cosmic Galactic Radiation, which is only found outside our solar system. Mulder says the radiation came from the artifact. Scully admits that she can't explain it, but they have enough for an arrest.
"Forget the arrest," Mulder says sharply. "We gotta find the artifacts." He winces and grabs at his temples.
Skinner leans in. "Agent Mulder?"
"There's someone else on this case, sir," Mulder says.
"Excuse me?" Skinner responds.
"There's someone else on this case you're not telling me," Mulder says.
"What's he talking about?" Skinner asks Scully.
"I hear it. In my head," Mulder says.
Scully gets him to leave the office and the two stand in the hallway. She tries again to get Mulder to go get some rest. "Listen to me," Mulder says. "He's not telling the truth. I'm hearing people. He's spying on us." They walk off.
Through his cracked door, Skinner watches them go, then re-enters his office. He walks over to an armoire, and we see he has been videotaping the proceedings. He takes the tape out, and as he does so, the side door to his office opens. Alex Krycek enters. Skinner tosses the tape to Krycek, obviously angry at having to do so.
Scully flies out to Gallup, New Mexico, and ends up at Southwestern General Hospital, where Albert Hosteen is a patient. As she is in the hallway, he is wheeled past her on a gurney. A nurse tells her he is dying of cancer. Scully goes to his room and finds a copy of the rubbing on his bedside table. On the back is a translation. It is the passage from Genesis that we saw earlier.
In DC, Mulder goes back to American University. He goes through Barnes' office, then into Sandoz' lab. Barnes, seemingly aware that something is not right, goes into his office, then the lab. Mulder hides from him in the lab, and as he does, he hears the voices again. It is much worse this time, and he is in a lot of pain. Barnes leaves the lab, and Mulder follows. He staggers down the hall, disoriented and weaving unsteadily. He lurches into a stairwell and makes it halfway up before collapsing. He crawls up the last few steps before falling to the floor, clutching at his head in agony.
In New Mexico, Albert is returned to his room. Scully goes to leave and spots Sandoz in the hallway. She chases him down. "I need answers from you."
At American University, Krycek arrives. He goes into the stairwell, and steps over Mulder, who lies writhing on the floor. [It seems as if Mulder looks up and sees Krycek--but it's hard to tell.] Krycek meets with Dr. Barnes on the roof of the building. "You and I are destined to be great friends," Krycek tells the professor as he hands him the videotape from Skinner's office.
In Gallup, New Mexico, Scully and Professor Sandoz sit by Albert's bed. Sandoz tells her that Albert was helping him translate the artifact, that the older man knew its power. Scully is skeptical. " A passage from the Bible on an artifact that you are saying is extraterrestrial? And how did the aliens get it?"
"They gave it to us!" Sandoz cries. "The text came from them."
He takes another piece of the artifact from his pocket, where it is wrapped up. He unwraps it and lays it on the tray over Albert's bed. He says Albert was working on that piece when his health turned bad but what he had found so far was only random letters. The artifact begins spinning rapidly again, as we saw the one in Africa do. Scully reaches out and stops it with her hand.
She calls Mulder at home. That bitch--er, I mean, Diana Fowley answers the phone. She gives it to Mulder, who is in bed, weakened and not well. Scully tells him she is with Sandoz in New Mexico, and about the Genesis passage.
Mulder: It's extraterrestrial.
Scully: Mulder, it can't be.
Mulder: Did you know what it would mean?
Scully: No, it would mean nothing, Mulder.
Mulder: No, it would mean our progenitors were alien, that our genesis was alien. That we're here because of them, that they put us here.
Scully: Mulder, that's science-fiction. It doesn't hold a drop of water.
Mulder: You're wrong. It holds everything. Don't you see? All the mysteries of science, everything we can't understand or won't explain, every human behaviorism, cosmology, psychology, everything in the X-Files, it all owes to them. It's from them.
Scully: Mulder, I don't accept that. It is just not possible.
Mulder: Well, then you go ahead and prove me wrong.
He hangs up the phone. Diana takes it back and goes into the living room. She calls CSM, and tells him that she got a call from Mulder "in a particular state of distress". She doesn't know what yet, but she plans to stay until she does. She hangs up, takes off her shirt and heads back toward the bedroom.
CSM hangs up on his end, and we see him sitting at the head of a table. Men and women discuss colonization, and how to prevent it. Seemingly he has assembled a new Syndicate.
We now get another Scully voice-over. This one occurs over video of Albert being taken into a Navajo hogan for a healing ceremony. Scully watches as this happens.
"It began with an act of supreme violence, a big bang expanding ever outward, cosmos born of matter and gas. Matter and gas, ten billion years ago. Whose idea was this? Who had the audacity for such invention? And the reason? Were we part of that plan, ten billion years ago? Are we born only to die? To be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, before giving way to other generations? If there is a beginning, must there be an end?
"We burn like fires in our time, only to be extinguished, to surrender to the elements' eternal reclaim: matter and gas. Will this all end one day? Life no longer passing to life, the earth left barren like the stars above, like the cosmos. Will the hand that lit the flame let it burn down? Let it burn out? Could we, too, become extinct? Or if this fire of life living inside us is meant to go on, who decides? Who tends the flames? Can he reignite the spark even as it grows cold and weak?"
Sandoz comes out of the hogan and invites Scully to join the ceremony. She declines, saying she doesn't share their faith.
Her phone rings then; it's Skinner. He asks where she is, and she tells him she is with Sandoz in New Mexico. The AD urges her to come back to DC as soon as possible. Mulder is in the hospital in serious condition. Scully tells Sandoz she has to leave and he begs her not to tell anyone where he is.
Scully arrives at Georgetown Memorial Hospital, where Skinner meets her. "I don't know what to do, Dana," he says. "No one else does, either. I knew you'd want to be here to see him, to talk to the doctors." He takes her hand.
Skinner leads Scully to an observation room. Over a video monitor, we see Mulder in a padded cell, pacing back and forth, muttering and sometimes screaming. Diana Fowley stands there, too. She thanks Scully for coming. "He was asking for you last night."
The doctor comes in and says they shouldn't be there. Scully asks what is wrong with Mulder. The doctors says he is exhibiting abnormal brain function, although there is no sign of stroke. Other than that, they can't tell, and they are waiting to do more tests because Mulder is too violent right now. With the drugs they have given him, he should be in a barbituate coma, but instead he is up and about.
Scully wants to see him. The doctor says Mulder is too dangerous. "Not to me," Scully insists.
Fowley asks Scully to speak with her in the hall. "About what?" Scully snaps. Skinner gets her to go outside. As they leave the room, Mulder screams Scully's name.
Diana asks about the case, and Scully gives clipped answers, revealing as little as possible. Diana says given her background with the X-Files, she can help. Skinner says the X-File here is a fraud, and that Scully has proof of it, given from a scholar. Scully turns to him in shock. "I never gave you that report," she says.
"Anyway, the case is resolved," Skinner says hastily.
Diana asks why Scully won't help her. Scully wants to know why she was the one with Mulder the night before. "He called me," Diana says. "I found him in a university stairwell; he could barely speak. He said I was the only one who'd believe him about an artifact."
Scully stares at her. "You're a liar." She turns to go, and Skinner takes her sleeve and calls her name. "You're both liars," Scully says, then walks off.
She returns to the X-Files office and searches for the video camera that she knows must be there--how else would Skinner know of her meeting with Burk? She has just found it, in the smoke detector, although she doesn't seem to know this, when the phone rings.
It's Sandoz, calling from New Mexico. He knows what the random letters on the artifact are, he says. They are coordinates, for gene clusters of the human genome. They are a map of the human genetic make-up. Before he can finish speaking, he is shot, killed by Krycek.
36 Hours Later
Scully arrives on the beach of the Ivory Coast where the original pieces were found. Natives take her to the tidal waters, then retreat. Scully walks through the sand to the water, then kneels down. She stares into the water, then stands and backs up. The camers pans back with her, revealing a spaceship buried in the sands along the coast.
To Be Continued....
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