"Gethsemane" ~4x24~

SCENE 1

ON TV SCREEN (NASA Symposium Boston University November 20, 1972)

PANELIST: Some feel that contact with other civilizations is no longer beyond our dream, but is a natural event in the history of mankind that will perhaps occur within the lifetime of many of us.

SCENE 2

MULDER'S APARTMENT

(Early morning. There are people milling around his living room. We see Scully's badge, then her worried face.)

SCULLY: Excuse me. (The people part and let her into the room)

VOICE: Let her through. (Scully walks from the foyer to the living room where there is a photographer taking pictures. She walks in to see a body with a sheet over it on the floor in front of the couch.)

DETECTIVE: Detective Rempulski, Alexandria P.D. Thanks for coming down to do this. (The detective is standing by the entry to the living room and walks with her to the body and kneels down by it's face. He lifts the sheet over the face and looks at Scully.) It him?

SCULLY: Yeah. (She looks away and leaves the room.)

SCENE 3

FBI HEADQUARTERS

(In an official room with a rectangular table and low level lighting, there are people seated around the table. A door opens that fills the room with light from the hall. Agent Scully enters)

BLEVINS: Agent Scully, please have a seat. (She sits in the nearest chair at the opposite end of the table from Blevins) Agent Scully, we've had a brief discussion, that will you restate the matter we're here to put to rest?

SCULLY: Yes sir. Four years ago, Section Chief Blevins assigned me to a project you all know as the X Files. As I am a medical doctor with a background in hard science, my job was to provide an analytical prospective on the work of Special Agent Fox Mulder, who's investigations into the paranormal were fueled by a personal belief that his sister had been abducted by aliens when he was 12. I come here today, four years later, to report on the illegitimacy of Agent Mulder's work. That it is my scientific opinion that he became over the course of these years a victim. A victim of his own false hopes and of his beliefs in the biggest of lies.

SCENE 4

SAINT ELIAS MOUNTAINS YUKON TERRITORY, CANADA

(Over the snow capped mountain, a helicopter flies over. In another helicopter, an older man, Arlinsky and a younger man, Babcock.)

ARLINSKY: We're meeting the guide at base camp. He'll take us to the site.

BABCOCK: Has he seen it?

ARLINSKY: Oh, yeah. He said it's unbelievable. (Babcock looks in the distance and sees yellow tents, base camp.)

BASE CAMP (A man waits for the helicopter to land and when it does, rushes to meet them. He helps the older man with his bag and the helicopter takes off.)

BABCOCK: How soon til we can get to the site?

MAN: Right now? We'd be pushing it to get to the camp by nightfall.

BABCOCK: I'd rather sleep seeing it than lay awake all night wondering.

MAN: It will take some work.

ARLINSKY: I've waited all my life for this day.

BABCOCK: Let's do it.

LATER (The men hike up the mountain.)

LATER (It's dark and the men trudge through a narrow crevice to get to a mini camp in the cave.)

MAN: We're here. (They greet others, introduce themselves and shake hands. They walk to the north wall and in the ice, there's a grey alien body.)

ARLINSKY: My God, it's beautiful.

SCENE 5

FBI HEADQUARTERS

(Back to the meeting)

BLEVINS: Agent Scully, I presume you have a basis for this break from Agent Mulder.

SCULLY: Yes Sir. Recent events have shed new light on the factual and physical evidence that would serve to prove the existence of extra terrestrial life, which was the foundation of Agent Mulder's consuming devotion to his work.

BLEVINS: What factual evidence?

SCULLY: Agent Mulder was recently contacted by man who's pursuit of this evidence seemed to coincide with his own. In his intense desire to believe, Agent Mulder was duped by this man. He was fooled by an act of scientific slight of hand calculated to perpetuate false truths, a larger lie. I am here today to expose this lie. To show the mechanism of deception that drew him and me into it. And to expose Agent Mulder's work for what it is.

SCENE 6

MRS SCULLY"S HOUSE

(There's a dinner party going on. A maid is rushing through the room. It's candle lit and tastefully festive. Mrs. Scully lights the last of the candelabra candles and walks toward Scully's voice in the living room. She's mingling.)

SCULLY: So he toppled over me and down the stairs.

MRS. SCULLY: Hi.

SCULLY: Speaking of Bill, is he coming? (The maid opens the door and it's Bill.)

MRS SCULLY: There he is. (She goes to greet him. Scully turns to him, it may have been a long time since she's seen him. He's wearing a Naval uniform and hugs his mother. Scully walks over)

SCULLY: Look at you, my big brother. (They hug)

BILL: Sorry I'm late. My ship got stuck in traffic. (Everyone laughs.) You get my birthday card?

SCULLY: Yes, I did. Thanks for remembering this year.

BILL: Well, once a decade... (Mrs Scully greets someone at the door. Scully looks over to see her greet Father McCue. Scully's smile for her brother fades)

BILL: How are you feeling?

SCULLY: I'm fine. Let's get some dinner, huh?

BILL: Yeah, starving. (They walk to the dining room while Scully looks back at her mother and the father.)

LATER (Everyone is seated at the table. Mrs. Scully refills wine glasses. Scully is sitting between Bill and the father.)

BILL: Mom, I'll open some more wine.

MRS SCULLY: Okay. (She hands him the empty and he goes to the kitchen)

FATHER: I feel awkward sitting here. I'm sure you do too.

SCULLY: No, I'm sorry.

FATHER: I've known your family so many years. Your mother asked me to come. That I might have a word with you. (Scully looks at her mother, laughing with the guests.) I know it's been some time since we've spoken ourselves, since you drifted from the church...

SCULLY: Father McCue, I...

FATHER: But a time of personal crisis, a threat to your health, going back to your faith is important and essential.

SCULLY: Father McCue.. I appreciate my mother's concern, and yours. But I'm being treated for my cancer and taking every precaution.

FATHER: Faith can make you stronger.

SCULLY: I haven't felt the need. I have strength and I...(the phone rings) I'm not going to come running back now. It's just not who I am. I'd be lying to myself, and to you.

BILL: (He's holding the phone receiver, half in the kitchen and half in the dining room with a sort of disgusted look on his face.) Dana... phone.

SCULLY: Excuse me. (She gets up and takes the phone from Bill in the kitchen.) Hello? (Cut to Mulder at the office)

MULDER: Hey Scully, it's me. Sorry to interrupt your dinner.

SCULLY: No, is something the matter?

MULDER: Well, I need your help on something. I was just contacted by Doctor Arlinsky from over at the Smithsonian.

SCULLY: Contacted you about what?

MULDER: About something he found on a mountain in Canada.

SCULLY: What? (Bill's peeved)

MULDER: I'd rather not talk about it the phone, I just need you to meet me over at the Smithsonian.

SCULLY: When?

MULDER: Right away. (Scully looks at Bill, who leaves the kitchen with a new bottle of wine. Scully exhales deeply.)

SCULLY: I'm on my way.

SCENE 7

SMITHSONIAN

(Mulder and Scully walk up the stairs)

MULDER: You're going to have to apologize for me to your brother and mother. This is something that just couldn't wait though.

SCULLY: It's okay. Who's this... Arlinsky?

MULDER: He's a forensic anthropathologist that I've been in contact with over the last four years. Several years ago he was involved in an embarrassing UFO photo enhancement scandal. But he continues to profess his innocence.

SCULLY: What am I coming to see?

MULDER: I'm not going to tell you. I'm going to let you decide for yourself.

SCENE 8

LAB

(There is a picture of the alien in the ice. Mulder walks in front of the screen projecting the image.)

ARLINSKY: By my rough estimate from the sediment in the ice core sample, the body you're looking at is over 200 years old.

MULDER: Perfectly intact.

ARLINSKY: Yeah.

MULDER: That doesn't make sense. There should be signs of gradation. (Mulder walks to Arlinsky. Scully is standing in the corner.)

ARLINKSY: The position it was found in. Stuffed in a crevice at high altitude. He may have frozen fast enough to avoid being eaten. (Mulder looks to Scully, who expectantly is not amused)

MULDER: Does that fit geologically?

ARLINSKY: The area where it was found, is in the terminal moraine of a glacier that has since receded. Over 200 years ago, where the alien was frozen was in the tree line so there might have been a thaw.

SCULLY: Who found him?

ARLINSKY: A Canadian geodetic survey team. (He joins Scully, who is looking through paperwork. He shows her a picture of the men on the mountain.) Along with a colleague of mine, Babcock. They're all still up there on the mountain.

MULDER: Who all knows about this?

ARLINSKY: I know what your first thought was. But the St. Elias range? It's an awful long way to go for a hoax.

MULDER: If you're going to go, why not go all the way?

ARLINSKY: I circumspect myself. But the ice core samples that I took. They can't be faked.

SCULLY: You have the ice core samples here?

ARLINSKY: Yeah. (He walks to a fridge and takes out a cylinder.) One taken from each side of the body. 360 degree matching the integrity of the sediment. It's my sincere belief that what we have here is the complete corpus of an extra terrestrial biological entity. Absolute and unrefutible.

MULDER: Qualitatively indefensible. You go public with this nobody is going to believe you. You also risk never knowing for sure because the same people who bury the truth so assiduously will be in charge of its authentication.

ARLINSKY: That's why I came to you. I need to get the specimen out so I can authenticate it. This body means everything to you, Agent Mulder. You could have the proof in your hands.

MULDER: And what do you want?

ARLINSKY: I just want the credit.

SCENE 9

STAIRWAY

(Mulder and Scully are leaving and putting on their coats as they walk, Scully ahead of Mulder)

MULDER: You think it's foolish?

SCULLY: I have no opinion, actually.

MULDER: You have no opinion?

SCULLY: This is your holy grail, Mulder. Not mine.

MULDER: What's that supposed to mean?

SCULLY: It just means proving to the world the existence of alien life is not my last dying wish.

MULDER: What about Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny? This is not some selfish pet project of mine, Scully. I'm as skeptical of that man as you are, but proof... definitive proof of sentient beings sharing the same time and existence with us, that would change everything. Every truth we live my would be shaken to the ground. There's no greater revelation imaginable, no greater scientific discovery.

SCULLY: You already believe, Mulder. What difference would it make? I mean, what would proof change for you?

MULDER: If someone could prove to you the existence of God, would it change you?

SCULLY: Only if it were disproven.

MULDER: Then you accept the possibility the belief in God is a lie?

SCULLY: I don't think about it, actually, and I don't think it can be proven.

MULDER: But what if it could be? Wouldn't that knowledge be worth seeking? Or is it just easier to go on believing the lie?

SCULLY: I can't go with you, Mulder.

MULDER: Can you at least take a look at those core samples? Tell me if they're a lie? That's all I'm asking.

SCENE 10

FBI HEADQUARTERS

(Back to the meeting)

SCULLY: What I couldn't tell Agent Mulder, what I had only learned myself, was that the cancer which had been diagnosed in me several months earlier had metastasized. And the doctors told me, sort of a miracle, it would continue to aggressively invade my body, advancing faster each day toward the inevitable.

SCENE 11

CAVERN

(Workmen are using chainsaws cutting the alien body free from the ice. One of the men walk to Babcock's tent. He's loading a gun.)

MAN: What's that for?

BABCOCK: I don't know these men well. Do you?

MAN: Well enough.

BABCOCK: I'm going to be up here alone until you get back. I hope I don't have to use it. (Another man walks to the tent)

OTHER MAN: I think you'd better have a look at this. (They walk to the alien body wall.)

OTHER MAN: We were doing a lateral cut in the back quarter when I saw something in the ice. (He points to a hole about an inch and a half diameter in the ice) Right here.

MAN: What do you think that is?

BABCOCK: I don't know. A bubble... a weak spot... (The other man lifts up a chunk of ice with demarcation on it.)

OTHER MAN: Or a casing channel. A pour hole. Liquid poured in from the side or above somehow.

BABCOCK: Poured from where?

OTHER MAN: I don't know.

BABCOCK: The angle wouldn't make sense.

OTHER MAN: Yeah, you're right. (The other man walks away.)

BABCOCK: We'll never know until we get it out of there. (The workers start cutting again)

LATER ON MOUNTAIN (The guide goes down the mountain.)

SCENE 12

PALEOCLIMATOLOGY LAB AMERICAN UNIVERSITY

(The ice core sample is on a slab.)

LAB TECH: The iron concentration density and temperature profiles are all consistent. There's a tight matrix of crystals of approximable center. (Scully and the lab tech are looking at the ice core sample.) Suggesting the quick freezing scenario we mentioned. Here at the terminus, you've got some particular hydro carbons, jet fuel pollutants found just about everywhere in the world.

SCULLY: But not in old ice.

LAB TECH: Don't misunderstand. This is old ice. This sample has numerous levels of sedimentation like the rings on a tree essentially.

SCULLY: So it hasn't been tampered with?

LAB TECH: No, not that I can see here. Can I ask why you're having this ice sample tested?

SCULLY: Another agent asked me to.

LAB TECH: Do you know where this sample came from?

SCULLY: From a site in the Yukon Territory, why?

LAB TECH: Some cellular material within the matrix...

SCULLY: Plant or animal?

LAB TECH: I don't know. It's what I'd have to classify as a chimera. A hybrid cell.

SCULLY: From what?

LAB TECH: As I said, I don't know.

SCULLY: Is it capable of cell division?

LAB TECH: I don't know that either. I just now found them. I'd like to get them under our electron microscope. If that's okay.

SCULLY: Yes. Please.

SCENE 13

BASE CAMP - NIGHT

(Feet walk slowly to the tents. A shotgun is cocked. Shots fire into the tents.)

MORNING

(A helicopter lands. Mulder and Dr. Arlinsky get out.)

MULDER: I thought you said there was someone meeting us.

ARLINSKY: Yeah, a guide named Roston. (The helicopter takes off. Mulder looks around, there's no one. They start walking to the tents in the distance.)

SCENE 14

COMMUNICATIONS TENT

(Mulder and Arlinsky enter and take off gloves. Arlinsky puts his hand on the camp stove.)

ARLINSKY: I don't get it. This had all been arranged. (Mulder is looking over another table.) I don't know what to do.

LATER (Mulder and Arlinsky walk up the mountain to the base camp.)

ARLINSKY: We should be able to follow this track all the way up to the site.

LATER (On their way up, they find a man laying on the ground.)

MULDER: Funny place to take a nap. (They run to him. It's the man who was walking alone earlier.)

ARLINSKY: God.

MULDER: He's been shot. He's our guide? (They walk on.)

SCENE 15

LAB

(Scully walks into the room she was in before with the lab tach. It's darker and only a strange man at a computer.)

SCULLY: Excuse me, I'm looking for Dr. Vitagliano. (No response) Dr. Vitagliano, is he here?

KRITSCHGAU: No, I'm afraid not.

SCULLY: I'm supposed to meet him here. Actually, I a little late.

KRITSCHGAU: Sorry. (Kritschgau picks up an ice core tube and walks out. Scully looks at that and looks around. She sees the fridge holding the samples is open and messy. She rushes out the door. She looks down the hallway. No one around, but a stairwell door closes. She goes through the door. She looks up and down. She tries another door to the floor. It seems to be locked. But it opens and pushes her down. She struggles with Kritschgau and she ends up going down the stairs. She groans as Kritschgau goes out the door.)

SCENE 16

BASE CAMP - NIGHT

(Mulder and Arlinsky arrive. It's quiet. They leave their packs outside and turn on flashlights and enter the cave. They see dead men in the tents.)

ARLINSKY: Oh, my God! They're all dead! They've been shot. (They look in all the tents. Arlinsky gets to Babcock's. He's still.)

ARLINSKY: Babcock! (He pauses and thinks) The body...! (They go to the wall containing the alien, it's gone.) It's gone! They took it! (Mulder is disappointed to say the least.) No one knew. We didn't tell a soul. (They walk down to the tents.)

MULDER: They had radio communication. Maybe it was being monitored. (They stop. They hear a groaning.) Someone's still alive. (They rush to Babcock's tent.)

ARLINSKY: It's Babcock.

MULDER: Get him some water. Look's like he took a shotgun hit, but it didn't open him up too badly. The bleeding stopped.

ARLINSKY: Who did this? (Mulder squirts water into his mouth.) They took the body, Babcock.

BABCOCK: No. I buried it.

ARLINSKY: Where? (Later, they move Babcock's tent and push some snow away. There it is.)

SCENE 17

ROOM

(Scully is buttoning her shirt after an exam I suppose. The door opens.)

BILL: Dana?

SCULLY: Bill. What are you doing here?

BILL: I picked up the phone when you called Mom's. They said you could use a change of clothes. (He gives her a hung up, plastic wrapped blouse)

SCULLY: Thank you. Um. Where's Mom?

BILL: I didn't tell Mom what happened. So, what did happen?

SCULLY: I was ... ahhh ... knocked down a flight of stairs, but I'm okay, luckily.

BILL: You're not okay, Dana. I know about your cancer.

SCULLY: I told Mom not to tell you.

BILL: Why?

SCULLY: Because it's very personal... Because I don't want sympathy.

BILL: You think you can cure yourself. Mom tells me that you've gotten worse, that your cancer's gone into your bloodstream. What are you doing at work, gettin' knocked down, beaten up? What are you trying to prove? That you're gonna go out fighting?!

SCULLY: Oh, now come on, Bill...

BILL: Do you know what Mom's going through? Why do you think I didn't tell her when they called?

SCULLY: What should I be doing?!

BILL: We have a responsibility! Not just to ourselves, but to the people in our lives!

SCULLY: Hey, look, just because I haven't bared my soul to you, or to Father McCue, or to God, it doesn't mean that I'm not responsible to what's important to me!

BILL: To what?! To who? This guy, Mulder? Well where is he, Dana? Where is he through all this? (Scully takes the clothes from Bill)

SCULLY: Thank you for coming. (She goes into another room)

BILL: Dana...

SCENE 18

SOUTHEAST WASHINGTON, DC

(A truck backs up to a warehouse door. A man opens it and another man comes to the back. There's a crate in the back)

INSIDE WAREHOUSE (Using crowbars, they open the crate, Mulder and Arlinsky. It's the block of ice with the alien. They lower it into hot water)

ARLINSKY: We should be able to do a good enough examination of the body right here to remove any doubt.

MULDER: We won't know for sure until we do a carbon dating test.

ARLINSKY: Well, I'm betting his physiology alone will be tell tale. (Babcock listens nearby)

MULDER: The Piltdown Man Hoax wasn't uncovered for forty years until it failed the carbon dating test. And that wasn't even very good.

BABCOCK: If this were a hoax, there are 6 dead men up there on that mountain. There sure as hell is somebody else who believes it wasn't.

SCENE 19

FBI SCI-CRIME LAB

WASHINGTON, DC

(A tech is sitting in front of a computer and Scully is standing behind her)

TECH: You well imagine it's a heavily traveled stairwell. We went back to the Bio Lab where we found an anomalous had latents. We found a partial match in the stairwell just four centimeters from one of yours.

SCULLY: Have you run it through the NCIC?

TECH: Yep. This is your assailant, unfortunately he doesn't have a criminal record.

SCULLY: Try the federal data base. (She hits some keys. A match is found)

TECH: I'll be damned! How did you know it would be a government employee?

SCULLY: Where does he work? (She hits some more keys)

TECH: Right here in Washington. Michael Kritschgau... formerly of the US Army... now attached to the Pentagon Research division in Virginia. (She hits more keys. A picture of the attacker Kritschgau appears on screen) Is this the man? (Scully nods yes)

SCENE 20

WAREHOUSE

(Arlinsky is doing the autopsy, talking to Mulder, Babcock filming Arlinsky as he speaks. As he talks of body parts, we are shown them on the alien)

ARLINSKY: The body is 147 centimeters long. Weighing 24 kilograms deliquesced. Derma is hairless, grey with an elephantine texture. There are small eruptions on the surface of the skin most likely due to the presence of iron phosphate in the ice. Otherwise, there appears to be no scarring... no identifying marks... the circumference of the head is 64 centimeters. There are four digits on each hand. Three on each foot. Sex is... undeterminable. The eyes are black covered by what appears to be a thin membrane which I am now removing. (He slices through the membrane to the eyeball) The tissue underneath seems to be semi gelatinous with a fine network of veins through out. (He removes the ribs) Examination of the chest cavity confirms the presence of what appears to be a cardio-pulmonary system... heart, lungs, all identifiable. Within a mass of white string like tissue that doesn't appear to correspond to human physiology.

SCENE 21

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE RESEARCH FACILITY

SETHBERG, VA

(Scully waits in her car across the street from the building. She sees Kritschgau leave and enter the parking garage. She turns the car on and drives to it)

PARKING GARAGE (Kritschgau enters through a door. We hear tires screeching. Kritschgau turns and sees a car coming at him full speed. It's Scully. She puts the brakes on just inches from his knees. He looks at her, recognizes her and runs. She gets out of the car, gun raised)

SCULLY: STOP! FEDERAL AGENT! HOLD IT! (She runs after him. She runs around the bend and she doesn't see him. She raises her gun as she quickly looks between cars) MICHAEL KRITSCHGAU?! YOU ARE UNDER ARREST! Identify your location! (She hears a car start. She runs to it. Kritschgau is about to get away. She runs in front of the car. Gun raised. He screeches to a stop just in time, good thing, cuz she wasn't moving) GET OUT OF THE CAR! NOW! (He parks the car and raises his hands) MOVE! (He gets out of the car with his hands raised. She moves to the side to meet him)

KRITSCHGAU: Please don't shoot. I didn't mean to hurt you. I had no choice.

SCULLY: Put your hands on the car. (She slams him onto the side of the car. His hands go to the roof. She starts frisking him)

KRITSCHGAU: If you arrest me, they'll kill me.

SCULLY: I don't know what you're talking about.

KRITSCHGAU: The same people who are trying to kill you. The people who gave you your cancer.

SCENE 22

WAREHOUSE

(After the autopsy)

ARLINSKY: There's tissue culture to be done. DNA sequence and then analysis. And it would be wise to run a gas cromatograph and that carbon dated you suggested. But if this isn't alien, I don't know what it is. (Mulder's cell phone rings. He answers it)

MULDER: Mulder...

SCENE 23

FBI HEADQUARTERS

(Back to the meeting)

SCULLY: I had reached agent Mulder at a warehouse just outside of Washington in Sethburg, Virginia. They had managed the frozen corpse by helicopter down the side of the mountain and across the Canadian border in a refrigerated truck. After conducting a limited physical examination Agent Mulder was ready to believe that the body was that of an extraterrestrial biological entity. That he had finally found the proof which had eluded him. Which would confirm not only the existence of alien life but of his sister Samantha's abduction.

BLEVINS: But this man Kritschgau had convinced you otherwise. How?

SCULLY: He told me a story which detailed, point by point, the systematic way in which Agent Mulder had been deceived and used and how I as his partner I had been led down the same path. Losing a family member due to my allegiance and contracting a fatal disease which I was told was engineered by the men who responsible for Agent Mulder's deception.

BLEVINS: Were you able to convince Agent Mulder of these facts?

SCULLY: I was only able to convince him to meet me so that he might hear the story the way I had.

SCENE 24

OUTSIDE WAREHOUSE - NIGHT

(Mulder goes to his car and leaves. There is a car of men watching him leave. The driver cocks a shot gun)

WAREHOUSE (Arlinsky and Babcock are covering the alien in ice once again. There's a noise at the door. It opens. The shadow of the driver, the assassin walks into the warehouse.)

ARLINSKY: What the hell is this?

ASSASSIN: Right there, Pork. (The assassin stops, shotgun pointed at Arlinsky and talks to Babcock) How's the wound?

BABCOCK: I'll live.

ARLINSKY: What is this Babcock?

ASSASSIN: Get the door. (He shoots Arlinsky as Babcock walks to the door. After the shot, Babcock walks back) Where did Mulder go?

BABCOCK: He got a call.

ASSASSIN: Is he a believer?

BABCOCK: Oh, yeah.

ASSASSIN: Then we're the only ones who know.

BABCOCK: Right.

MULDER'S APARTMENT (Kritschgau sits on a chair across from Mulder on the sofa. Scully is leaning against the doorway between the dining and living rooms)

KRITSCHGAU: The lie you believe, that they have cleverly led you to believe, Agent Mulder, is that there is intelligent life, other than our own, and that we have had contact with these life forms.

MULDER: So you're saying this has all been orchestrated? A hoax?

KRITSCHGAU: Which you've been used to perpetuate.

MULDER: You come by this knowledge how?

KRITSCHGAU: Working for the DOD Watching a military industrial complex that operated unbridled and unchecked during the Cold War, create a diversion of attention from itself and its continued misdeeds by confabulating enough believable evidence to convince passionate adepts like yourself... that it really could be true.

MULDER: And just by chance, you run into Agent Scully?

KRITSCHGAU: (gives the comment a snort and smile) I was just like you, Agent Mulder, suspicious of everything but what you should be. I ran the DOD's agitprop arm for a decade. I can show you records of disinformation dating back to the Korean War, before you were even born.

MULDER: Why come to me now? Why not four years ago?

KRITSCHGAU: I have a son who's very sick. He served in the Gulf War... The lies are so deep the only way to cover them, is to create something even more incredible. They invented you. Your regression hypnosis, the story of your sister's abduction, the lies they fed your father. You wanted to believe so badly. And who could have blamed you?

MULDER: And the thousands of UFO sightings?

KRITSCHGAU: Above top secret military aircraft, concept designed to feed hysteria.

MULDER: Evidence of alien biology?

KRITSCHGAU: Unclassified, but naturally occurring biologic anomalies science will eventually explain.

MULDER: The body that was found?

KRITSCHGAU: Meticulously constructed out of biomaterials created through the hybridization of differentiated cells. What are called chimeras. Frozen into place over the course of a year using sentiment and materials that would bear out its age, poured through a small channel drilled in the rock above.

MULDER: They would have known that the body would be carbon dated, that it would be proved a fake.

KRITSCHGAU: The body will never be tested, Agent Mulder.

MULDER: What do you mean?

KRITSCHGAU: You were only meant to see it, to make you believe the lie, so that you might finally commit and go public with the news.

MULDER: (to Scully) This man is a liar.

KRITSCHGAU: You can see for yourself, Agent Mulder. The body is already long gone.

SCENE 25

WAREHOUSE

(Mulder and Scully walk in and Mulder is devastated by the empty room. The alien is gone. But Arlinsky's body is found)

SCULLY: Mulder... (Mulder almost trips over Arlinsky's body)

MULDER: Ah...

SCULLY: What?

MULDER: Arlinsky's dead.

SCULLY: So is this man. (She motions to the hot water bath. Mulder walks over and sees Babcock's body floating in the bloody water)

SCULLY: Who did this, Mulder? Mulder? (He starts to angrily walk away)

MULDER: What we had here was proof, Scully, there's no way it could be anything else.

SCULLY: You said it yourself, Mulder. More tests needed to be run.

MULDER: Yeah, but, the ice core samples checked out. If the ice hasn't been tampered with, how could the body within be a fake?

SCULLY: Cellular material found in the ice core samples were a direct match for what this man Kritschgau described. Hybrid cells, chimeras within the matrix.

MULDER: Do we know for sure that those cells are not extraterrestrial?

SCULLY: Mulder, everything this man described. You can't just guess at these details. I'm sorry, but the facts here completely overwhelm any argument against them!

MULDER: Facts overwhelmed by the lies created to support them!

SCULLY: Mulder, the only lie here is the one that you continue to believe.

MULDER: After all I've seen and experienced, I refuse to believe that it's NOT true!

SCULLY: Because it's easier to believe the lie. Isn't it?

MULDER: What the hell did that guy say to you, that you believe his story!?

SCULLY: He said that the men behind this hoax... behind these lies... gave me this disease to make you believe. (Mulder walks off and leaves her alone)

SCENE 26

MULDER'S APARTMENT

(Mulder sits alone on the couch, same as opening scene, watching the video)

ASHLEY MONTAGUE: What we generally mean is, of course, intelligent life, something resembling our noble selves. It's entirely probable that there ARE such intelligent forms of life in other galaxies, in the universe. And it is even more probable that many of these forms are vastly more intelligent than we.

ANOTHER MAN ON VIDEO: I think there's no question but that we live in an inhabited universe, that has life all over it. (Mulder is crying)

CARL SAGAN: By finding out what the other planets are like, by finding out whether there are civilizations on planets among the stars, we reestablish a meaningful context for ourselves. (Mulder is in pain)

ASHLEY MONTAGUE: I don't think we should wait until the encounter occurs, but that we should do all in our power to prepare ourselves for it.

ISSAC ASIMOV: I can conceive of no nightmare as terrifying as establishing such communication with a so-called superior or, if you wish, advanced technology in outer space. (We see a close-up of Mulder's crying face, which morphs into Scully's face at the hearing, also beginning to cry)

SCENE 27

SCULLY: Earlier this morning, I got a call from the police, asking me to come to Agent Mulder's apartment. The detective asked me ... he needed me to identify a body...

BLEVINS: Agent Scully ...

SCULLY: Agent Mulder died late last night from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

[TO BE CONTINUED ...]