The X-Files

Give it up, Mulder! You've got no chance!

- (mutters) Damn it. - My sniper zombies are everywhere.

I'll offer you a deal.

You give me the Lazarus bowl and I'll give you Scully.

Mulder!

How about this deal?

You give me Scully, I don't smash the bowl

and shove the pieces where the Son of God don't shine.

You cigarette-smoking mackerel snapper.

I break the Lazarus bowl and all your sniper zombies

go back to being good little well-behaved corpses.

You don't fool me, Mulder. That bowl is your Holy Grail.

Encoded in its ancient ceramic grooves are the words Jesus spake

when he raised Lazarus from the dead.

Still capable of raising the dead 2,000 years later.

Proof positive of the paranormal.

You could no sooner destroy that than let the redhead die.

Come on, man. Don't break the bowl.

We don't wanna go back to being dead.

There's no food, no women, no dancing.

Save the bowl. Then we'll dump that ciggy-smoking stooge for you.

And you'll be the new king of the dead.

I'd rather serve in heaven than rule in hell.

Is that your flashlight, Mulder, or are you just happy to be lying on top of me?

- Oh, that. - (laughter)

For seven long years I've been waiting for the right moment, Scully.

Oh, you're a sick man, Mulder. Go on.

I love you, Scully.

- No ifs, ands, or... - Bees.

Yesterday, a bomb ripped through the crypt of Christ's Church here in DC.

There were no casualties, no thefts, no note making any demand.

- Who's taking credit for it? - Nobody.

She, Jodie Foster's foster child on a payless budget.

He's like a Jehovah's witness meets Harrison Ford's Witness.

Uh, Christ's Church. Isn't that Cardinal O'Fallon's church?

O'Fallon's residence is adjacent to the crypt.

- Who's Cardinal O'Fallon? - Cardinal O'Fallen, perhaps.

He's one of the most powerful men in the church today.

His name often comes up as a possibility for the first American Pope.

- Oh. - (phone)

I don't want to be myopic here, sir, but this looks like a terrorist act for the ATF.

- MYOpic. - (Phone keeps ringing)

- Yes, it does. - Are you gonna answer your phone?

Me? I didn't wanna be rude.

- So who the hell is this guy? - Wayne Federman. An old buddy of mine.

He's a writer in Hollywood and he's working on an FBI-based movie.

He's asked me to give him access.

- A screenwriter? - It's actually as a writer-slash-producer.

He looks actuallyjust a hindrance-slash-pain in the neck.

Agent Mulder, I don't wanna eat your lunch. I'm just here for some procedural flavour.

I've no idea what you've just said.

Well, the Skin Man's filled me in on your particular bent.

He said that you come at things maybe a little fahkatke, a little Star Trekkie.

Which is the exact vibe I'm looking for.

It's a Silence of the Lambs meets Greatest Story Ever Told type thing.

It's beautiful and I will not be in your way.

I'll be strictly Heisenbergian.

A hologram.

Mr Federman will accompany you to Christ Church. He will act as an observer.

You will extend to him every courtesy and protection you would a friend of mine.

Agent Scully, I require your services here for the morning.

Sir, have I pissed you off in a way that's more than normal?

I'm just curious if she's more than your partner. Hey, whatever.

Cardinal O'Fallon, can you think of anyone who might make an attempt on your life?

The Church always has enemies, Agent Mulder.

The size of the bomb would have limited its destruction to the crypt.

- Is there anything there worth targeting? - Not really.

Just some old bones, artifacts, relics,

documents that we store down there in the cold.

I like to think of it as God's refrigerator.

- That's a great line. - Thank you.

- God's refrigerator. - Wayne, shut up.

No treasures to the outside world.

Things of negligible monetary value,

but great spiritual value to the Church.

Ancient devotional texts, medieval relics.

How about the shroud of Turin?

No, afraid not.

But we do have the bathrobe of St Peter.

- You're kidding? - Yes, I am.

- That's a good line. - Wayne. Shut up.

Who comes down to the crypt here?

Only myself.

We have half a mile of catacombs here.

I like to walk here during lunch.

That's where the bomb went off.

Well, my instinct, is to see this desecration of the dead less as a murder attempt

and more as a terrorist act. - (phone)

A message...

Uh, this isn't me. I think it's you.

Excuse me.

- That's... that's not me. - Let me check.

Not me.

We never get reception here.

Would that be St Jude's cellphone, Cardinal?

No.

That's Micah Hoffman.

Micah Hoffman, Willie Mays and Frank Serpico,

that's my holy trinity, Scully.

Of course, I'm too young to remember, but wasn't he a '60s campus radical

like a Jerry Ruben or a Mario Savio?

Name a '60s counterculture movement, and Hoffman was at or near the centre of it.

He was one of the original Weathermen. He was the first yippie.

He was a better poet that Ginsberg and the starting shortstop for his baseball team.

Then in the '70s, didn't he go real low profile?

Right after Altamont. He was never heard from again.

The Stones get blamed for everything. I don't get it.

This should be it, here.

- What did Skinner want you for? - Just paperwork.

Mm. Hm-hm.

- Mulder, we should have a warrant. - Hey, it's only the Constitution. No big deal.

- Wow. - Dis-feng shui.

Sorry to denigrate a third of your trinity,

but it looks like Hoffman was killed by one of his own bombs.

Well, from dharma bum to dharma bomb.

I knew Hoffman was a master potter.

It appears he was a master calligrapher as well.

Look, Mulder, we've got gum arabic and sodium hydroxide here.

Ooof. These would be used to age the ink and the paper prematurely.

It's a forger's trick.

Well, from counterculture to counterfeiter.

All right, one more pun and I pull out my gun.

Scully, look at that. "Christos". Looks like a religious text. Can you read Greek at all?

Well, it's pretty rusty.

But it looks like some kind of lost Gospel.

A Gospel of Mary Magdalene.

And an account of Christ's life on earth after the Resurrection.

- After? - Yeah. It's a heretical text, Mulder.

Mythical, but long rumoured to be in existence.

What would Hoffman be doing with heretical religious texts?

The question is what would he be doing forging them?

I think the real question is what might O'Fallon be doing with Hoffman's forgeries?

You don't need a Weatherman to know which way the wind blows. Don't shoot.

I like the way you guys work. No warrants, no permission, no research.

You're like studio executives with guns.

Should I call you Agent Mulder or Mr Mulder?

Or, like, do you have a nickname?

Shh, Shh, shh.

Like Skin Man?

- Just ignore me. - What's that?

It looks like the same Gospel of Mary Scully lD'd over at Hoffman's place.

So, is this a forgery or is this the real thing?

There is no real gospel of Mary, Federman. The original would be a fake.

All right, so it this a real fake or a fake fake?

- (phone) - It's me.

I can hear you.

It's just your voice is... It's like a crackly sound and then I hear a syllable.

Stop yelling. Yelling isn't helping the situation. Just talk.

You're breaking up.

No. Let me call you back. OK.

Yeah, I'm telling you. I'm going through a crypt.

Oh!

Wow.

Oh, my God.

Now, Wayne, I'm sure that it was dark in there,

and that your eyes were playing tricks on you.

And you've been influenced by ghost stories and horror movies

that take place in crypts and graveyards.

And you hallucinated this vision of these dancing bones

trying to reconstruct this bowl.

No, I didn't hallucinate. That was mechanical or CGI.

Federman, that wasn't a movie. That was real life.

The difference being?

Well, I have got my flavour here.

So, I appreciate all your help. I've got a movie to write.

You don't want to get to the bottom of this?

Not especially.

Well, you know, sometimes truth can be stranger than fiction.

Well, fiction is quicker than truth and cheaper.

You want my advice? You're both crazy.

Why do you say that?

You're crazy for believing what you believe.

And you're crazy for not believing what he believes.

I'll leave you with that. Thank you.

I miss him already.

I know that Federman's BS-ing you.

So I'm really hesitant to mention this.

But, um, his story reminds me of the Lazarus bowl.

- The Lazarus bowl? - We had this wacky nun in Catholic school.

We called her Sister Spooky, cos she told us scary stories.

Twisted Sister. That's my kind of nun, you know?

She'd hold up an old piece of wood with a rusty nail in it

and say "This is a piece of the cross that Christ's wrist was nailed to."

Or she'd show us a vial of red liquid and say that it was John the Baptist's blood.

She'd be in prison today. You realise that?

Well, she'd tell the story of when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead.

And she said that there was this old woman who was Lazarus' aunt or something...

- Lazarus' aunt? - Spinning a clay bowl on a wheel nearby.

And that Christ's words, the actual incantation to raise the dead,

were recorded in the grooves of the pottery,

just like the way music is recorded into vinyl.

You see? It's just not true that you can't get good science at Catholic school. It's a lie.

Well, Sister Spooky says that these words in the clay

still have the power to raise the dead.

- Just like Jesus raised Lazarus. - That is a very cool story coming from you.

I'll have Chuck Burks meet you, see if this clay has Christ's greatest hits on it.

And I'm gonna go have another audience with Cardinal O'Fallon.

There's music in the air, Agent Scully.

See, everything that exists vibrates and therefore sings.

The street, your internal organs, electricity, everything.