Each passing year has seen
our estimate of the probability of life in space increase,
along with our capabilities of detecting it.
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.
Oh, 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 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 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 on 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 day.
Let's do it.
Over here.
How you doing?
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 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.
...remembered it myself,
but something about me standing-- I was, like,
a two-and-a-half-year-old-- behind him on the stairs
and grabbing him by the knees,
and 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. 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.
Father McCue. Oh.
Been waiting for you.
How you feeling, Dana?
I'm fine.
Let's get some dinner, huh?
Yeah, I'm starving.
Everything's ready. Oh.
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 in 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.
Um... 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.
Hello?
Hey, Scully, it's me.
Sorry to interrupt your dinner.
No, uh... is something the matter?
I need your help on something.
Somebody named Arlinsky
just contacted me over at the Smithsonian.
Contacted you about what?
About something he found on a mountain in Canada.
What?
I'd rather not to talk about it over the phone.
I just need you to meet me over at the Smithsonian.
When?
Right away.
I'm on my way.
I'm going to have to apologize to your brother and mother.
This is something that just couldn't wait though.
It's okay.
Who's this Arlinsky?
He's a forensics anthropologist
that I've been in contact with over the past four years.
Several years ago, he was involved
in an embarrassing UFO 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 over 200 years old.
It looks perfectly intact. Yeah.
That doesn't make sense.
There would've 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.
200 years ago, the area where he was frozen
was within the tree line, so there would have been a thaw.
Who found him?
A Canadian geodetic survey team.
Uh, there...
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 Saint Elias Range?
That's a long way to go for a hoax.
Well, if you're going to go, why not go all the way?
Well, I'm circumspect myself,
but the ice core samples I took-- they 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.
You go public with this, and nobody's going to believe you.
You also risk never knowing for sure, 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 going to have the proof in your hands.
And what do you want?
We just want the credit.
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?
It just means that 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 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 time and existence with us--
that 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?
I mean, 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.
Well, 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 had metastasized.
And 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 going to be up here alone
till 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 ion concentration, density and temperature profiles
are all consistent.
There's a tight matrix of crystals
at about proximal 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?
No. Not from what I can see here.
Can I ask why it is you're testing this ice?
Uh, 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've just now found them.
I'd like to get them under our electron microscope,
if that's okay.
Yes, please.
What's going on?!
I thought you said there was
someone meeting 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.
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, my God.
It's our guide?
Yeah.
Excuse me.
I'm looking for Dr. Vitagliano.
Dr. Vitagliano-- is he here?
Uh, no, I'm afraid not.
I, uh, I was supposed to meet him here actually.
I'm-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... Shh.
Someone's still alive.
It's Babcock.
Give him some water.
Looks like he took a shotgun hit,
but it didn't open him up too badly.
The bleeding's stopped.
Who did this?
There you go.
They took the 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.
Um, where's Mom?
I didn't tell Mom what happened.
So, what did happen?
I, uh... 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 going to go out fighting?
Oh, now, come on, Bill.
Do you know what Mom is 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.
Hey, look, just-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.
To what?
To who?
This guy Mulder?
Well, 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 a carbon-dating test,
and that wasn't even very good.
If this were a hoax,
would we have six dead men
up on that mountain?
Now, somebody other than us
sure as hell believes it's not.
As you can imagine,
that's a fairly heavily trafficked stairwell.
So we went back to the bio-lab
where we found an anomalous set of latents.
Found a partial matching in the stairwell
four centimeters from one of yours.
Have you run it through the NCIC?
Yeah. This is your assailant.
Unfortunately, he doesn't have a criminal record.
Try the federal database.
I'll be damned.
How'd you know he'd 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?
Body is 147 centimeters long,
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,
most 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.
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...
seems to be semi-gelatinous
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 and 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!
Michael Kritschgau!
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.
Put your 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,
and 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 were 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?
Get the door.
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 is 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've 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?
That's 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 even 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 UFO 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 bio-materials
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 bear out its age.
Poured through a small channel drilled in the rock above.
They would've known that the body would be carbon-dated,
that it would be proved a fake.
The body will never be tested, Agent Mulder.
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. Arlinsky?
It's gone.
Mulder.
What?
It's Arlinsky.
He's dead.
So is this man.
Who did this, Mulder?
Mulder?
What we had here was proof, Scully.
There's no way it could be anything else.
You said it yourself, Mulder--
more tests needed to be run.
Yeah, 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 that 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.
Mulder, 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, of course, 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 a 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 a so-called superior or, if you wish,
advance 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.