The X-Files s04e24 Episode Script

Gethsemane

"Each passing year has seen "our estimate of the probability of life in space increase, "More and more scientists feel that contact with other civilizations "is no longer something beyond our dreams, "but is a natural event in the history of mankind that will, perhaps, occur within the lifetime of many of us.
" All right, great.
Tell him to come on in.
- Excuse me.
- Make way.
Lethe through.
Agent Scully? Detective Rempulski, Alexandria P.
D.
Thanks for coming down to do this.
- It him? - Yeah.
Agent Scully, please have a seat.
Agent Scully, we've had a brief discussion, but will you restate the matter we're here to put to rest? 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 perspective on the work of Special Agent Fox Mulder whose 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.
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 belief in the biggest of lies.
We're meeting the guide at base camp.
- He'll take us to the site.
- Has he seen it? Oh, yeah.
He said it's unbelievable.
- How soon can we get to the site? - Right now? We'd be pushing it to be up top by nightfall.
I'd rather sleep seeing it than lay awake all night wondering.
- It's gonna take some work.
- I've waited all my life for this day.
Let's do it.
Over here! Hello.
- I assume you're okay.
Nice to meet you.
- George.
My God.
It's beautiful.
Agent Scully, I presume you have a basis for this break from Agent Mulder.
Recent events have shed new light that would serve to prove the existence of extraterrestrial life, which is the foundation of Agent Mulder's consuming devotion to his work.
What factual evidence? Agent Mulder was recently contacted by a man whose 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 sleight of hand calculated to perpetuate false truths, the 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.
Grabbing him by the knees, then him falling backwards, tumbling over me and down the stairs.
- Hi.
- Speaking of Bill, is he coming? - Good evening.
May I take your coat? - Thank you.
There he is.
Hi.
Hello, Dana.
- Look at you.
- Look at you, my big brother.
I'm sorry I'm late.
My ship got stuck in traffic.
- Did you get my birthday card? - Yes, I did.
- Thanks for remembering this year.
- Once a decade.
How you feeling, Dana? - I'm fine.
Let's get some dinner, huh? - Yeah, I'm starving.
You came just in time.
So the parrot says, "I only got one question: What did that chicken in there do?" - Mom, I'll open some more wine.
- Okay.
I feel awkward sitting here.
I'm sure you do too.
- No.
I'm sorry.
- I've known your family for so many years.
Your mother asked me to come, that I might have a word with you.
I know it's been some time since we've spoken ourselves, since you drifted from the church.
- Father McCue- - But at a time of personal crisis, a threat to your health, - turning back to your faith is important and essential.
- Father McCue I appreciate my mother's concern and yours, but I'm being treated for my cancer, and I'm taking every precaution.
Faith can make you stronger.
I haven't felt a need.
I have strength, and- - and 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.
Dana.
phone.
Excuse me.
- No, is something the matter? - I need your help on something.
- Somebody named Arlinski just contacted me at the Smithsonian.
- Contacted you about what? - About something he found on a mountain in Canada.
- What? I'd rather not talk about it over the phone.
I just need you to meet me at the Smithsonian.
- When? - Right away.
I'm on my way.
I'm gonna have to apologize to your brother and mother.
- This is something that just couldn't wait, though.
- It's okay.
Who is this Arlinski? He's a forensics anthropologist that I've been in contact with over the past four years.
Several years ago he was involved in a U.
F.
O.
photo enhancement scandal, but he continues to profess his innocence.
- What am I coming to see? - I'm not going to tell you.
I want you to decide for yourself.
By my rough estimate, from the sediment in our ice core samples, the body you're looking at is over200years old.
- It looks perfectly intact.
- Yeah.
That doesn't make sense.
There would have been signs of predation.
Yeah, but the position he was found in, stuffed in a crevice at high altitude, he may have frozen fast enough to avoid being eaten.
- Does that fit geologically? - The area where he was found is in the terminal moraine of a glacier which has since receded.
Two hundred years ago, the area where he was frozen was within the tree line.
- There would have been a thaw.
- Who found him? A Canadian geodetic survey team.
Along with a colleague of mine named Babcock, they're all still up there on the mountain.
- Who else knows about this? - No one.
I know what your first thought was, but the St.
Elias range? That's a long way to go for a hoax.
- If you’re gonna go, why not go all the way? - I'm circumspect myself, but the ice core samples I took can't be faked.
You have the ice core samples here? Yeah.
Yeah.
One taken from each side of the body.
A 360-degreematching integrity of sediment.
It's my sincere belief that what we have here is the complete corpus of an extraterrestrial biological entity.
Absolute, and irrefutable.
Qualitatively indefensible.
You go public with this, and nobody is going to believe you.
You also risk never knowing because the same people who buried the truth so assiduously - will be in charge of its authentication.
- 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're gonna have the proof in your hands.
- And what do you want? We just want the credit.
- Do you think it’s foolish? - I have no opinion, actually.
- You have no opinion? - This is your Holy Grail, Mulder, not mine.
What is that supposed to mean? is not my last, dying wish.
How about Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny? This is not some selfish pet project of mine.
I'm as skeptical of that man as you are, but definitive proof of sentient beings sharing time and existence with us would change everything.
Every truth we live by would be shaken to the ground.
There is no greater revelation imaginable, no greater scientific discovery.
You already believe, Mulder.
What difference will it make? What will proof change for you? If someone could prove to you the existence of God, would it change you? Only if it had been disproven.
Then you accept the possibility that belief in God is a lie? I don't think about it, actually, and I don't think that it can be proven.
But what if it could be? Wouldn't that knowledge be worth seeking? Or is it just easier to go on believing the lie? I can't go with you, Mulder.
Can you at least take a look at those core samples and tell me if they’re a lie? That's all I'm asking.
What I couldn't tell Agent Mulder, what I had only just learned myself, was that the cancer which had been diagnosed in me several months earlier The doctors told me, short of a miracle, it would continue to aggressively invade my body, advancing faster each day towards the inevitable.
What's that for? I don't know these men well.
Do you? - Well enough.
- I'm gonna be up here alone until you get back.
I hope I don't have to use it.
I think you better have a look at this.
We were doing a lateral cut to the back corner when I saw something in the ice.
Right here.
What do you think that is? I don't know.
It could be a bubble, a weak spot.
Or a casting channel, a pour hole.
Liquid poured in from the side or above somehow.
Poured from where? - I don't know.
- The angle wouldn't make sense.
Yeah, you're right.
We'll never know until we get it out of there.
The iron concentration, density and temperature profiles are all consistent.
There's a tight matrix of crystals at approximal center, suggesting the quick-freezing scenario you mentioned.
Here at the terminus, you've got some particulate hydrocarbons: jet fuel pollutants found just about everywhere in the world.
- But not in old ice? - Don't misunderstand.
This is old ice.
This sample has numerous layers of sedimentation, like the rings on a tree essentially.
- So it hasn't been tampered with? - Not from what I can see.
Can I ask why it is you're testing this ice? Do you know where this sample came from? From a site in the Yukon Territory.
- Why? - There's some cellular material within the matrix.
- Plant or animal? - I don't know.
It's what I'd have to classify a chimera, - a hybrid cell.
- From what? - As I said, I don't know.
- Is it capable of cell division? I don't know that either.
I’ve just now found them.
I'd like to get them under our electron microscope, if that’s okay.
Yes, please.
I thought you said there was someone meeting us.
Yeah, a guide named Ralston.
I don't get it.
This had all been arranged.
He knew he was supposed to take us up to the summit.
I don't know what to do.
We can probably follow this track right up to the site.
Maybe we'll meet him on the way down.
Funny place to take a nap.
- He's been shot.
- Oh, God.
- This our guide? - Yeah.
Excuse me.
I'm looking for Dr.
Vitagliano.
Dr.
Vitagliano- Is he here? Uh, no, I'm afraid not.
I was supposed to meet him here.
Actually, I'm a little late.
Sorry.
Oh, my God.
They're all dead.
They've been shot.
Babcock! The body.
It’s gone.
They took it! No one knew.
We didn't tell a soul.
They had radio communication.
Maybe it was being monitored.
Wait.
Shh! Someone's still alive.
It's Babcock.
Get me some water.
It looks like he took a shotgun hit.
It didn't open him up too badly.
The bleeding's stopped.
Who did this? - Here you go.
- They took our body, Babcock.
- No I buried it.
- Where? - Dana? - Bill.
What are you doing here? I picked up the phone when they called Mom's.
Said you could use a change of clothes.
Thank you.
Where's Mom? I didn't tell Mom what happened.
- So what did happen? - I, uh- I was knocked down a flight of stairs, but I'm okay, luckily.
You're not okay, Dana.
I know about your cancer.
- I told Mom not to tell you.
- Why? Because it's very personal.
Because I don't want sympathy.
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, getting knocked down and beaten up? What are you trying to prove? That you’re gonna go out fighting? Come on, Bill.
You know what Mom's going through? Why do you think I didn't tell her when they called? - What should I be doing? - We have a responsibility, not just to ourselves, but to the people in our lives! Just because I haven't bared my soul to you or to Father McCue or to God doesn't mean that I'm not responsible to what's important to me.
To what? To who? This guy, Mulder? Where is he, Dana? Where is he through all this? - Thank you for coming.
- Dana- We should be able to do a good enough examination of the body right here to remove any doubt.
We won't know for sure until we do a carbon dating test.
I'm anticipating his physiology alone is going to be telltale.
The Piltdown man hoax wasn't uncovered for 40 years until it failed the carbon dating test, and that wasn't even very good.
If this were hoax, would we have six dead men up on that mountain? Somebody other than us sure as hell believes it's not.
As you can imagine, that’s heavily trafficked stairwell, so we went back to the bio lab where we found an anomalous set of latents.
We found a partial matching in the stairwell four centimeters from one of yours.
- Have you run it through the N.
C.
I.
C.
? - Yep.
This is your assailant.
Unfortunately, he doesn't have a criminal record.
Try the federal database.
I'll be damned.
How'd you know it would be a government employee? Where does he work? Right here in Washington.
Michael Kritschgau, formerly of the U.
S.
Army, now attached to the Pentagon's research division in Virginia.
Is this the man? The body is weighing 24 kilograms deliquesced.
Derma is hairless gray with an elephantine texture with no odor.
There are some small eruptions on the surface of the skin, mostly likely due to the presence of iron phosphate in the ice.
Otherwise there appears to be no scarring and no identifying marks.
The circumference of the head is 64 centimeters.
There are four digits on each hand and three on each foot.
The sex is indeterminate.
The eyes are lidless black covered by what appears to be a thin membrane, which I am now removing.
The tissue underneath with a fine network of veins running throughout.
Examination of the chest cavity confirms the presence of what appears to be a cardiopulmonary system- heart, lungs, all identifiable- within a mass of white string like tissue that doesn't appear to correspond to human physiology.
Stop! Federal agent! Hold it! You are under arrest! Identify your location! Get out of the car! Now! Move! Please don't shoot.
I didn't mean to hurt you.
I had no choice.
- Hands on the car! - If you arrest me, they'll kill me.
I don't know what you’re talking about.
The same people who are trying to kill you.
The people who gave you your cancer.
There's tissue culturing to be done, DNA sequence and an analysis.
We'd be wise to run a gas chromatograph and that carbon dating you suggested.
But if this isn’t alien, I don't know what it is.
Mulder.
I had reached Agent Mulder in 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.
But this man Kritschgau had convinced you otherwise.
How? 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, had been led down the same path, losing a family member due to my allegiance and contracting a fatal disease, which I was being told was engineered by the men who are responsible for Agent Mulder's deception.
Were you able to convince Agent Mulder of these facts? I was only able to convince him to meet me so that he might hear the story the way I had.
- Who the hell is this? - Right there, Pork.
How's the wound? I'll live.
What is this, Babcock? Where did Mulder go? - He got a call.
- Is he a believer? Oh, yeah.
- Then we're the only ones who know.
- Right.
The lie you believe- that they have cleverly led you to believe, Agent Mulder- is that there's intelligent life other than our own and that we have had contact with these life-forms.
So you’re saying this has all been orchestrated, a hoax? - Which you have been used to perpetuate.
- You come by this knowledge how? Working for the D.
O.
D.
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.
And just by chance, you run into Agent Scully? I was just like you, Agent Mulder: suspicious of everything but what you should be.
I ran the D.
O.
D.
's agitprop arm for a decade.
I can show you records of disinformation dating back to the Korean War, before you were born.
Why come to me now? Why not four years ago? 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? And the thousands of U.
F.
O.
sightings? Above-top-secret military aircraft concept designed to feed hysteria.
Evidence of alien biology? Unclassified but naturally occurring biologic anomalies science will eventually explain.
- The body that was found? - 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 sediment and materials that would be a rout its age, poured through a small channel drilled in the rock above.
They would have known the body would be carbon-dated, that it would be proved a fake.
- The body will never be tested.
- What do you mean? 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.
This man is a liar.
You can see for yourself, Agent Mulder.
The body is already long gone.
Dr.
Arlinski? It's gone.
Mulder? What? It's Arlinski.
He's dead.
So is this man.
Who did this, Mulder? Mulder? What we had here was proof.
There's no way it could be anything else.
You said it yourself: More tests needed to be run.
But the ice core samples checked out.
If the ice hasn't been tampered with, how could the body within be a fake? Cellular material found in the ice core samples were a direct match for what this man Kritschgau described: hybrid cells, chimeras within the matrix.
Do we know for sure those cells are not extraterrestrial? 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.
Facts overwhelmed by the lies created to support them.
The only lie here is the one that you continue to believe.
After all I've seen and experienced, I refuse to believe that it's not true.
Because it's easier to believe the lie, isn't it? What the hell did that guy say to you that you believe his story? He said that the men behind this hoax behind these lies gave me this disease to make you believe.
What we generally mean is intelligent life, something resembling our noble selves.
It is highly 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.
I think there’s no question but that we live in an inhabited universe that has life all over it.
By finding out what the other planets are like, by finding out whether there are civilizations on planets of other stars, we reestablish meaningful context for ourselves.
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.
I can conceive of no nightmare as terrifying as establishing such communication with so-called superior or, if you wish, advanced technology in outer space.
Early 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.
Agent Scully Agent Mulder died late last night from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

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