X-Files: Case One

Pilot

The elevator rang, and the door slid open.

Scully entered the basement and came to an office in the back. She knocked on the door.

"Sorry, nobody down here but the FBI's most unwanted," Mulder called out.

Scully opened the door to see Agent Fox Mulder sitting at his desk, reviewing some slides.

A young girl sat on his desk's edge, absentmindedly swinging her legs. The girl looked up and, upon seeing Scully, ran behind Mulder.

"Agent Mulder. I'm Dana Scully; I've been assigned to work with you,"

Mulder shook Scully's hand. "Oh, isn't it nice to be suddenly so highly regarded? So, who did you tick off to get stuck with this detail, Scully?"

"I'm looking forward to working with you. I've heard a lot about you,"

"Oh? I was under the impression...that you were sent to spy on me," Mulder smiled.

"If you doubt my qualifications or credentials, th..."

Mulder stood and took out a paper from a pile with his telephone as a paperweight. "You're a medical doctor, you teach at the academy. You did your undergraduate degree in physics." He removed his glasses and looked at the paper "'Einstein's Twin Paradox, A New Interpretation. Dana Scully Senior Thesis.' Now that's credential, rewriting Einstein,"

"Did you bother to read it?"

"I did. I liked it." Mulder took a slide canister and put it into the slide projector. "It's just that in most of my work, the laws of physics rarely seem to apply." He walked past Scully and turned off the lights.

Scully glared at Mulder slightly.

"Maybe I can get your medical opinion on this, though," Mulder pressed a button on the control, and a slide came up on the viewscreen of a female face-up.

Scully glanced back to the young girl. "Are you sure that's fine for..."

"Oregon female, age twenty-one, no explainable cause of death. The autopsy shows nothing. Zip." Mulder changed the slide to that of two bumps on her back. "There are, however, these two distinct marks on her lower back. Doctor Scully, can you ID these marks?"

"Needle punctures, maybe. An animal bite. Electrocution of some kine." Scully walked up to the viewscreen.

Mulder changed the slide to that of a molecular diagram. "How's your chemistry? This is the substance found in the surrounding tissue,"

"It's organic. I don't know, is it some synthetic protein?"

"Beats me; I've never seen it before either,"

The next slide is of a boy face-down on railroad tracks, his shirt lifted in the back.

"But here it is again in Sturgis, South Dakota,"

The final slide was a close-up of another set of bumps.

"And again in Shamrock, Texas,"

"Do you have a theory?" Scully questioned.

"I have plenty of theories." Mulder walked over to Scully. "Maybe you can explain why it's bureau policy to label these cases as 'unexplained phenomenon' and ignore them. Do you believe in the existence of extraterrestrials?"

"Logically, I would have to say 'no.'"

Mulder nodded, having expected that answer.

"Given the distances needed to travel from the far reaches of space, the energy requirements would exceed a spacecraft's capabilities th..."

"Conventional wisdom." Mulder interrupted, "You know this Oregon female? She's the fourth person in her graduating class to die under mysterious circumstances. When convention and science offer no answers, might we not finally turn to the fantastic as a plausibility?"

"The girl died of something. If it was natural causes, it's plausible that something was missed in the post-mortem. If she was murdered, it's plausible there was a sloppy investigation. What I find fantastic is any notion that there are answers beyond science. The answers are there. You have to know where to look,"

"That's why they put the 'I' in 'FBI.' See you tomorrow morning, Scully, bright and early." Mulder walked back over to his desk and sat down. "We leave for the very plausible state of Oregon at eight A.M.,"