The X-Files

Each passing year has seen our estimate of the probability of life in space increase...

...along with our capabilities of detecting it.

Scientists feel that contact with other civilisations...

...is no longer beyond our dreams...

...but is a natural event in the history of mankind...

...that will perhaps occur within the lifetime of many of us.

- Excuse me. - Make way. Let her through.

Agent Scully? Detective Rempulski, Alexandria PD.

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 fuelled 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'll meet 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'll take some work. - I've waited all my life for this clay.

Let's do it.

How you doin'?

My God!

It's beautiful.

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

Yes, sir.

Recent events have shed new light on the factual and physical evidence...

...that would prove the existence of extraterrestrial life, ...

...which is the foundation of Agent Mulder's devotion to his work.

What factual evidence?

Agent Mulder was 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.

- Hi. - Speaking of Bill, is he coming?

Good evening. May I take your coat?

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. Thanks for remembering this year.

Once a decade.

- How are you, Dana? - I'm fine. Let's get some dinner, huh?

Yeah, I'm starving.

So the parrot says "I only got one question."

"What did that chicken in there do?"

- Mom, I'll open some more wine. - OK.

- I feel awkward 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...

...I'm not gonna come running back now.

It's just not who I am. I'd be lying to myself and to you.

Dana.

Phone.

Excuse me.

- Hello. - It's me. Sorry to interrupt your dinner.

- No... is something the matter? - I need your help on something.

Somebody named Arlinsky just contacted me from the Smithsonian.

Contacted you about what?

About something he found on a mountain in Canada.

I'd rather not talk over the phone. Meet me at the Smithsonian.

- When? - Right away.

I'm on my way.

I'll apologise to your brother and mother. This couldn't wait, though.

It's OK. Who is this Arlinsky?

A forensics anthropologist I've been in contact with for four years.

He was involved in a UFO photo-enhancement scandal...

...but continues to profess his innocence.

- What am I coming to see? - I'm not telling you.

I want you to decide for yourself.

I estimate, from the sediment in our ice-core samples...

...the body you're looking at is over 200 years old.

- It looks perfectly intact. - Yeah.

There would've been signs of predation.

But the position he was found in, 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 moraine of a glacier which has since receded.

200 years ago, the area where he was frozen was within the tree line.

- There would've been a thaw. - Who found him?

A Canadian geodetic survey team.

Along with a colleague of mine named Babcock. They're still 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-degree matching 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. Go public and nobody will believe you.

The same people who buried the truth 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, not mine.

What does that mean?

Proving to the world the existence of alien life is not my last dying wish.

How about Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny?

This is not a selfish pet project of mine.

I'm as sceptical of that man as you are...

...but definitive proof of sentient beings would change everything.

Every truth would be shaken to the ground. There is no greater revelation imaginable.

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. I don't think 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 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 earlier had metastasised.

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'd 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.

lon concentration, density and temperature profiles are consistent.

There's a tight matrix of crystals at proximal centre...

...suggesting the quick-freezing scenario.

At the terminus are particulate hydrocarbons:

jet-fuel pollutants found just about everywhere.

- But not in old ice? - Don't misunderstand. This is old ice.

This sample has layers of sedimentation, like the rings on a tree essentially.

- So it hasn't been tampered with? - No. Not from what I can see here.

- Can I ask why you're testing this ice? - Another agent asked me to.

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'd like to get them under our electron microscope, if that's OK.

Yes. Please.

I thought you said someone would meet us.

Yeah, a guide named Rolston.

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.