The X-Files

From space it seems an abstraction, a magicians trick on a darkened stage.

And from this distance one might never imagine that 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.

440 million years ago

a great mass extinction would kill off nearly every species 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.

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 100,000 years ago Homo sapiens appear.

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 natural 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.

ls there a plan, a purpose, or a reason to our existence?

Will we pass, as those before us, into oblivion?

Into the sixth extinction that scientists warn is already in progress?

Or will the mystery be revealed through a sign?

A Symbol?

A revelation?

Professeur! Professeur! Professeu r, venez voir!

Tout le monde, venez voir! Venez voir, tout le monde.

Allez. Oestlé-bas. C'est de I'autre cété. Suivez-moi.

Yes. Get me the international operator. I need to place a call to the United States.

Excuse me. I am looking for the biology department, for a Professor Sandoz.

Dr Sandoz? Professor Sandoz, I'm Solomon Merkmallen.

My God, I thought something had happened to you.

Oh, did you not get my message? We were delayed in Frankfurt.

Look, the important thing is you're here now and you're safe.

You brought me something. This discovery of yours.

- Yes. - I'm quite anxious to see it.

I was concerned I might be relieved of it in customs.

There was some trouble with the x-ray machine in Germany.

What kind of trouble did you have?

- I told you of its power. - Yes, of course.

My credentials were the only thing that prevented me from being further detained.

I can't explain how it is, but the two pieces have become one.

I hoped they'd match the piece you found, so that you might see for yourself its magic.

Have you had any luck reading it?

You're not Dr Sandoz, are you?

Damn.

A case like this, I thought of your interest. Dr Merkmallen's views being what they were.

I believe Agent Mulder's familiar with his work.

Dr Solomon Merkmallen. Professor of biology, University of Ivory Coast.

He flew in yesterday from Africa.

Two hours later he was apparently murdered at American University.

His body is missing, but there was blood on the floor.

Two students spoke to him when he asked them for directions to find a Dr Sandoz,

also a professor of biology.

Both men espouse a theory called panspermia.

- It's the belief life originated... - Elsewhere... in this universe.

- You've heard of this? - Yeah. It's the idea that Mars or other planets

were habitable long before Earth.

And that cosmic collisions on these planets blasted microbes into our solar system,

- some of which flourished here. - You'd accept that as plausible?

Well, almost any scientist would... theoretically. I mean, it's just a theory.

That's about it, though.

Think this has anything to do with his death?

Dr Merkmallen found an artefact in his country. This is a rubbing of that artefact.

He claimed it contained a message of the very meaning of human existence.

Much less plausible.

Dr Sandoz, the man he'd come to meet, made a similar claim in a science journal.

He said he'd found a artefact almost identical to that with similar writings on it.

- And what was it supposed to say? - We'd have to ask Dr Sandoz that.

- Well, why don't we? - We can't. He's missing.

What are we doing, Mulder? This is a police matter at best.

Skinner wants us on the case.

You gonna convince me you have no personal interest in this case?

- I am just a hired gun for the FBI. - Oh, come on.

I wonder if there's something to this.

Two men suggesting we're all Martians. Why would they possibly come into foul play?

That's what we're being asked to figure out.

I can't stand here...

I mean, this endless pursuit of the truth, Mulder.

It just doesn't make any sense to me now.

Mulder?

Did you hear a word of what I just said?

- No. - No.

- Well, maybe you didn't wanna hear it. - No, I...

I couldn't hear it.

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?

My sister.

Guess I was right about this being a police matter.

- Detective. - Can I help you?

Agents Mulder and Scully, FBI. What do you have?

Probable weapon. Blood and hair on it. Prints, too.

- Any word on this Dr Sandoz? - No.

- But we're being told the prints are likely his. - Told by whom?

The man your partner's speaking with.

- I'm Fox Mulder with the FBI. - I'm Dr Barnes, head of the department.

They've asked me to suspend classes and organise interviews.

- Any ideas about what happened? - There's plenty of speculation.

- About the missing Dr Sandoz? - Apart from his laughable ideas,

he was capable of almost anything to advance his questionable reputation.

Capable of murder?

Dr Sandoz's notes are full of talk about a artefact coming over from West Africa.

But, like the man bringing it, it has yet to be located.

Are you speaking of this?

Mulder?

Dr Sandoz believes this writing was from aliens.

These are trivial men with no patience for the scientific process.

They're happy to read their names in the tabloids. Pseudo-scientists.

Beyond embarrassment.

- What is it, Mulder? - I don't know.

This, uh, hollow noise.

The same thing that happened to me at work in the elevator this morning.

- Do you have a fever? - No.

This sounds weird, but I think it's that thing.

You're not kidding.

It's just a piece of paper.

I recognise the ideography.

You're late.

I'm sorry. I thought this was my office.

Fox.

I called Chuck cos I knew you would, for authentication.

And to get his professional opinion on how it's affecting you.

- Fascinating. - You don't believe it?

No, no. You know me! This is right up my twisted little alley.

So, uh, what exactly are you experiencing?

Noise, aural dissonance. It comes and it goes.

- Is it happening right now? - No, but it was a few minutes ago.

And it's only affecting you? Triggered by the rubbing?

- Wow. That blows me away. - Why?

Because the rubbing is a fake. And I'm not the first one to say so.

The writing is Cree. Phonetic Navajo. But no literal interpretation makes any sense.

And the fact it was found in Africa makes it all the more suspicious as a fabrication.

- Suspicious of what? - D'you know what a magic square is?

- Yeah, it has to do with the occult. - Right. Very cool.

They first appear in the ninth century in history.

But, uh...

as the story goes, God himself instructed Adam in their use,

and then handed down the secret to all his saints, prophets and wise men

as a way of trapping and storing potential power

to the person whose name or numerical correlative exercises that power.

- That's what this thing is? - Someone would have you believe it is.

- How do you know that? - Neither of us had to go very far to find out.

Barnes documented Sanders iakew once before.

If he was blunt about his colleague when we met him, here he is brutal.

- Does he back any of that up? - Well, it's quite scholarly, actually.

Barnes has made something of a career exposing science and religious fraud.

Name your wonder of the world. He's been there, debunked that...

Yeah, but wouldn't it be in his great interest to hide something that he couldn't disprove?

Mulder, if it were real, why would an American Indian artefact be fused in rock

on the west coast of Africa?

In 1996 a rock from Mars was found in Antarctica. How did it get there?

It was from outer space.

Begs the question, doesn't it?

Why produce a fraud with Navajo writing... in Africa?

Mulder?

- Hey. - (groans)

Step outside.

Step outside.

You're in pain.

No, no, it's gone away.

Mulder, whatever's causing this, I think it needs immediate attention.

- I'm gonna schedule you an imaging scan. - No, I'm OK. I really am.

You're not OK. If nothing else, you should be at home in bed.

I'm not going home to bed, Scully. I think I know what's causing this.

I know what happened to the two professors.

- I had a sense of it when I met Barnes. - You had "a sense of it"?

Yes. This man, Solomon Merkmallen, is dead. Barnes knows it.

- He killed him. He killed him in that lab. - (sighs)

I hope you're not going to suggest we arrest him on that baseless assumption.

No, I'm not.

Not until after I show you what he did with the body.

I've been through it. Know what you're lookin' for?

We'll let you know if we find it.

Cops have been here too, you know. They couldn't find nothin' either.

- We'll come get you... - Yeah, yeah.

Whatever happened to Dr Sandoz, he liked to fly south for the winter. A lot.

Gallup, New Mexico. Navajo country.

Well, I think I know who he was going to see.

- That's Albert Hosteen. - A World War ll codetalker.

Maybe he was using him to read the symbols on the artefact.

Or write them.

Mulder, you also said we'd find a body.

Care to make good on that prediction?

- Scully, you packin' any latex? - No. Why?

Doesn't it smell like somebody forgot to take out the garbage?

- (flies buzzing) - Oh!

Oh, God.