DISCLAIMER: The X-Files and its characters are the intellectual property of Chris Carter and are © and TM Chris Carter, Ten Thirteen Productions and 20th Century Fox. This script was written in homage to the show and is not meant to infringe upon the creative rights of CC. No monetary gain results from the writing or online publication of this script. Anyone can display this online as long as they do not use it for commercial purposes and as long as it appears as it is with my name attached to it.
A. Diao Lavina Bangkok April 1999

A Fair Place in the Sun

By A. Diao Lavina

TEASER:

CENTRAL PENNSYLVANIA
JUNE 3
1.03
(Woods in Tiny Brush Valley, Central Pennsylvania. Late at night. Four young people, twentysomething, are sitting around a large campfire, talking, laughing, chugging beer. There are a lot of empty bottles lying near the large cooler. Muted nature noises.)

URSULA: (Setting down her bottle of Miller Lite to pound outstretched legs with balled fists.) Jeez, my legs are killing me.

SARA: (Lying back against a large backpack.) Tell me about it.

JASON: (Gulps beer, swallows.) I told you people to stretch before we started out.

URSULA: Yeah, but how much stretching is going to make sure you don't feel like roadkill after trekking twelve miles? (Groans.)

YURI: (With accent.) There's a way to massage the pain out of your muscles. If you want, I could-

JASON: (Jokingly.) C'mon, Yuri, you just want (affecting accent) to touch her aching long legs. (Laughs and then chugs beer.)

URSULA: (Groans.) Jase, grow up. Is that something you learned at the gymnast camp, Yuri?

(Yuri nods. He gets up and walks over to where Ursula is seated. He lifts one of her legs and feels for the knots.)

SARA: Hey, If that works, I'm next.

JASON: (Looks around, slight frown.) Peter's been gone a long time. Doesn't take that long to piss.

SARA: (Giggles weakly.) Maybe he got eaten by a bear.

(JASON, apparently tickled by the image, begins to laugh uncontrollably in a drunk way.)

(A scream, harsh and in pain, is heard. The four people freeze, look around. Again the scream is heard. They all look toward the direction it comes from, a black patch of lightless woods. A figure emerges from the darkness, staggering, flailing arms, making raspy cries. A closeup reveals that it is a young man. A closeup of his eyes reveal that they are completely black. He screams chillingly again, and then in a sudden burst of energy runs for the bonfire. He dives into the fire, and it quickly ignites his clothes. The other four people are frozen in disbelief and fear. The fire grows bigger. Camera zooms into the flames as we hear the death screams of Peter.)

OPENING CREDITS.

SCENE 1.
OVER KISHACOQUILLAS VALLEY, PA
JUNE 4
3.36 PM

(Inside a helicopter. A deputy sheriff, MILES and a PILOT in front, Mulder and Scully in the back. Scully is wearing very cool shades, see the ones she wore in Chinga. Mulder and she are wearing tee shirts and jeans with light jackets.)

MILES: (Over the whirr of blades, yelling.) The kids trekked from Nittany Valley to Tiny Brush Valley, about twelve to fifteen miles total. Young. Only one of 'em's local-or kind of local. He's a trainee at the Woodward gymnastics camp in Penns Valley. The rest were kids from other states who go to State U.

MULDER: Officer Miles, why is the gymnastics trainee 'kind of local'?

MILES: Kid's from Kazakhstan. Migrated when he was twelve. Recruited for future gold by one of the coaches.

SCULLY: (Exchanges look with Mulder.) And the victim is who?

MILES: Biology major at Penn. Hails from Ohio. Peter Gregory. We're holding the kids, you can talk to them as soon as we get to town.

PILOT: Sheriff, the clearing's in three.

MILES: We're here, folks. Welcome to the heart of Pennsylvania.

(They land. In the swirling rotor noise and flying bits of grass, Mulder and Scully disembark and run to the crime scene.)

SCENE 2.
(TINY BRUSH VALLEY campfire site. A large patch of blackened grass. Around it, the backpacks of the trekkers, cooler, empty bottles. In the center of the grass is a body, charred and still smoking.

A deputy is circling the area with tape. Another deputy sees Sheriff Harris and runs to him.)

MILES: Sheriff Harris, these are Agents Mulder and Scully from the FBI. (Turns to Mulder and Scully.) Sheriff was the one on duty this morning when the kids stumbled into the office.

HARRIS: The local kid, Yuri got in first. The others came about two hours later.

SCULLY: What did they say exactly happened here?

(As she speaks, Mulder walks off toward the woods, slowly, intermittently peering at the ground.)

HARRIS: The kids say they trekked about twelve miles from Nittany, arrived here around 6.40 PM. Set up a large bonfire. Started drinking a lot. They say they went off towards there (pointing to where Mulder is) to-uh-relieve themselves from time to time. Around eleven, Peter Gregory went off to pi-uh-urinate and was gone for almost half an hour. Then just before midnight, the kids heard screams. A while later, Peter comes out of the woods, screaming, runs for the fire, dives in.

SCULLY: Are there any signs that he was being attacked?

HARRIS: You mean by an animal? (Scully nods.) No, Ma'am. Wanda-Deputy Bell over there (points to a young woman putting crime scene tape around the camp site) was first officer on the scene. She says she already checked for tracks. No animal ones. The only human tracks she found seem to be from the kids walking around and to and from the camp and the-uh-outhouse.

(Officer Bell has finished taping the crime scene and goes to the body which she reaches as Scully and Harris do. Bell kneels over the body. The body is charred and the flesh which is burned is almost totally burned, like the bodies in Patient X and The Red and the Black.)

BELL: (Turns over the body to its side. Closeup of the face-contorted in a grimace. Bell looks up at Harris and Scully.) Whatever actually killed him, it hurt.

(HARRIS begins taking photographs. Scully takes out rubber gloves from her valise and touches the body's arms, which are totally charred.)

SCULLY: I can't ascertain time of death from body temps and rigor mortis alone. From the looks of it, the fire was extreme. The skin's burned all the way through. Great heat accelerates rigor mortis.

(Mulder approaches carrying a brown paper bag.)

MULDER: I found three beer bottles at the tree the kids apparently designated the toilet. One Miller Light, two Buds. I also found some faint sneaker tracks leading away from the tree to some rocks thirty feet away. Could be his. (Nods at the body.)

BELL: He could've wandered farther away for his toilet break?

MULDER: I don't know. I'm going to check around the rocks. (Looks down at the body.) Looks like he was dead before he burned? Scully?

(Bell looks up at him, surprised.)

SCULLY: I can't say for sure, Mulder, not until I do an autopsy. But that's possible. He's in a pugilistic posture, which may suggest that he was already dead when exposed to the flames.

(The sound of a helicopter arriving at the clearing 300 feet away. Harris runs to it and out of it emerge two uniformed men with a stretcher. Harris speaks to the two men and then runs to where the agents and Bell are.)

HARRIS: Agent Scully. They're ready to transport the body for the autopsy. Bell, Miles and I will bag everything else.

MULDER: I'll stay. Catch up with you later, Scully. (He hands the brown paper bag with the three beer bottles to Bell and heads off in the direction of the designated toilet tree.)

(The two uniformed men have finished bagging the body. They head off carrying the body in the bag to the chopper. Scully follows. They board quickly, and the chopper rises. Fade to black.)

SCENE 3
ALLEGHENY FRONT
JUNE 4
4.48 PM

(Mulder has reached the end of the sneaker trail and comes to a pile of rocks at the foot of a mountain. He checks his watch. He stand looking around and spies a beer bottle near some loose rocks.)

MULDER: End of party, Peter.

(He takes a brown paper bag from a back pocket and using the hem of his jacket, he picks up the bottle and bags it. He notices an opening in the ground and proceeds to lift rocks and uncovers a crawl space. Takes a flashlight from a jacket pocket and switches it on, then crawls into the hole. We can hear Mulder breathing.

The hole appears to be the entrance to a cave or tunnel. Mulder snakes his way in. The narrow opening gives way to a wider tunnel where Mulder can actually walk bent at the waist and knees.

He comes to a small roomlike space. Shines light around. We glimpse damp walls with rusty streaks. Then we glimpse manmade beams on the ceiling of the cavern! Mulder looks slightly surprised.

Then he hears a slight sound, like that made by a snake slithering on pebbles, a raspy hiss. He points light onto walls. Breathing quickens.

On the third hit the light reveals black oil seeping from the wall opposite Mulder. Closeup of his face. Panic written on it. Mulder heads fast out of the tunnel. Outside, he breaths hard, hands on knees, then starts sprinting back to the crime scene. Fade to black.)

SCENE 4.
MILESBURG COUNTY CORONER'S OFFICE
JUNE 4
9.20 PM

(In an autopsy lab. Scully is in surgical suit smeared with carbon; she stifles a yawn and stands arms akimbo looking at a couple of x-rays of a skull. Mulder knocks and enters.)

MULDER: I see you're done dicin' and slicin'. What you got, Scully?

SCULLY: (Turns off the x-ray viewing light and turns to Mulder.) He had third-degree burns, as I anticipated, Mulder. Clear through to the endodermis. His stomach had begun to burn. 73 percent of his body is deeply burned all the way into the endodermis. But the tests found no incendiary material or substances. He was very drunk, but apart from the alcohol, no other suspicious substances showed up in the tox.

MULDER: What killed him?

SCULLY: Injured tissue in the heart suggests he may have had an arrest or fibrillation, possibly due to the smoke inhalation. Or any other extreme fright, shock, excitement.

MULDER: He had a heart attack? Before or after he jumped into the fire?

SCULLY: It doesn't make any sense to me, Mulder. His burns suggest he was probably incapacitated when he was in the fire, but on the other hand, an ordinary campfire with wood for its sole fuel could not possibly produce the high temperatures responsible for burns such as this man has.

MULDER: But could he have been alive when he jumped into the fire?

SCULLY: I found traces of carbon monoxide in his blood, so yes, there is a high probability that he was alive when he began to burn.

MULDER: Necessarily? What's your call Scully?

SCULLY: Necessarily, he should already have had the beginnings of cardiac arrest and then jumped into the fire.

MULDER: (Seems to ponder.) Are there any-anomalies in his bone structure?

SCULLY: (Eyes widen slightly.) Actually-(turns to the x-ray viewing screen and turns on the light, points to the skull x-rays) his skull shows signs of a kind of sponging. (Points.) Here-do you see these holes?

MULDER: Sponging. Like the holes in a sponge.

SCULLY: (Lowers her voice.) This is only the second time I've seen this.

MULDER: (Also lowers his voice.) The first time being when?

SCULLY: Texas. Mulder, the fossilized bones you showed me in Texas, they had similar perforations.

(They share a Look.)

MULDER: I saw something today, Scully. Out there in the woods. Peter left his beer bottle at the entrance to what I found was a set of tunnels. His prints were on the bottle. I also checked-the place was a coal mine, abandoned in the late 40's. I went in and saw (sighs, searches her eyes for trust and finds it) black, oily substance seeping from a rock wall inside a chamber deep in the tunnels.

SCULLY: Mulder, although we can't yet rule out the possibility that this is a homicide-

MULDER: (Interrupting.) I know what I saw, Scully. It was the same stuff we've seen before.

SCULLY: I don't disbelieve you, Mulder. I'm saying that the evidence I've gathered here tonight says a lot about this not being a homicide. But that we also have to attend to all possibilities.

MULDER: OK. Sheriff Harris has arranged for us to talk to the witnesses tomorrow morning. (Looks at watch.) Are you hungry? Wanna grab a bite?

SCULLY: First things first, Mulder. I need a shower.

(Fade to black.)

SCENE 5.
BIG VALLEY LODGE
MILESBURG, PA
JUNE 4
11.04 PM

(Scully is in fresh tee shirt and jeans, wet hair. Knock on the door. She peers at peephole, unlocks the chain, lets Mulder in.)

MULDER: (Holding up a takeout bag from a fastfood chain.) Hey, Scully, guess what bedrock America shares with the rest of the cosmos.

SCULLY: (Takes the bag from him, takes out the wrapped burgers, fries, and two large, presumably Diet sodas.) Cosmic munchies. (She holds the two burgers and doesn't know which one is hers, holds out for Mulder to tell her. Mulder is taking off his jacket, drapes it over the back of his chair, which is the one of the two chairs in the room Scully isn't sitting in.)

MULDER: (He grabs the one wrapped in blue and leaves her the one in yellow wrapping, face close to hers.) I got you extra cheese.

(Lo and Behold, Mulder and Scully eat while On a Case.)

(Later, still at the table, the fastfood stuff has been replaced by the laptop. Scully is seated in front of it, Mulder stands leaning over her shoulder.)

SCULLY: I had electron microscope stills made of the Texas fossils. Take a look at the perforations in the image, Mulder.

(The wormlike tunnels and holes in the image on the screen look like blown up photos of the perforations in the skull we saw earlier in the x-rays of Peter Gregory's skull bones.)

MULDER: I still think there's a link between what's happened to the bones and the black oil. There were tests in Tunguska. Then in Texas, there were the bodies of the firemen and the boy. You said yourself, Scully. Their bones looked hollow.

SCULLY: What would be the connection? Tunguska in the Former Soviet Union, an underground cave in Texas, an abandoned mine in Central Pennsylvania?

MULDER: I don't know, Scully. But there's got to be some other piece to the puzzle we're not even close to finding. Something that links these places, something that explains what these things mean.

SCULLY: Mulder, maybe we could go down to the tunnels and check-

MULDER: (Interrupting, forcefully.) No, Scully.

(Scully looks at him quizzically, surprised at his emotion.)

MULDER: (Quietly.) You were in a glass box, underneath ice and snow, in a large aircraft of unknown origin. And inside you, eating away your life, was this thing I don't even have a name for. (He lays his hand on her shoulder then bends down and presses his forehead against the back of his hand.)

(Scully reaches up to touch the side of his face.)

(Fade to black.)

SCENE 6.
MILESBURG COUNTY SHERIFF'S OFFICE
JUNE 5
1.28 PM

(Inside the interrogation room. Scully and Mulder are talking to Yuri. They are in the middle of the interview.)

YURI: And he ran from the trees. He screamed again. Like someone, someone was tearing him apart. That kind of scream.

MULDER: What did you think when you saw him, when you heard him then?

YURI: That he is-what do you say-high as a kite. But a bad flight.

SCULLY: And you have reason to believe that he was using drugs?

YURI: No, no. I don't have any reason to believe. I don't know him. I just thought.

MULDER: You didn't know Peter Gregory, and you were with these people-how did that happen?

YURI: I know Sara. She goes to the gymnast's camp, where I train.

SCULLY: Then what did you see happen, Mr. Kolivanov?

YURI: Then he-he jumped into the fire.

MULDER: And?

YURI: Then I don't believe it is happening. I jump, I grab a blanket I am sitting on. The fire growing bigger. I am beating it with the blanket.

SCULLY: Only you?

YURI: Yes. I don't know about the others, I just do what I do. Then the blanket catches fire, and Jason finally gets up and we try to throw the ice and water in the cooler over the fire. But then boom! (He claps his hands together loudly, once.) there is a burst in the fire.

MULDER: A burst in the fire?

YURI: A sudden, very sudden flash. Look. (He leans in and we can see that his eyebrows and eyelashes are gone, like they've been singed off by sudden, high heat.)

(Scully exchanges a glance with Mulder.)

MULDER: And then?

YURI: And then Peter stopped screaming.

SCULLY: Thank you, Mr. Kolivanov. (She reaches out to shake his hand.) You're free to go now. Sheriff Harris will need to see you before you go.

YURI: Thank you. (He gets up and leaves the room.)

MULDER: (When the door shuts behind Yuri. In a low voice.) I believe him.

SCULLY: So do I.

MULDER: (Looks at Scully, eyebrows raised.) And the three others?

SCULLY: (Nodding.) All their stories check out. There's no plausible motive for any one of them to harm Peter. It wasn't a murder. No signs of struggle. Anatomical evidence that Peter Gregory died of a heart attack. (Sighs.)

MULDER: But?

SCULLY: What makes you think there is a "but"?

MULDER: Why? There isn't any? (Feigns disappointment.)

SCULLY: We've practically solved the case. But. How come it doesn't feel solved.

MULDER: Careful, Scully. You're saying the F word.

SCULLY: (Gives him a Look.) Mulder, an ordinary campfire could not have singed facial hair of someone standing an arm-length away. An ordinary campfire could not have given a person third-degree burns in less than ten minutes. And yet there is no logical explanation other than the fact that Peter Gregory had a heart attack, fell into a fire incapacitated, there was a burst or a boom! (claps hands once) and he burns.

MULDER: Case closed?

SCULLY: Not even close. (She suddenly turns to him, wonder in her eyes.) Mulder. It's an X-File.
(Then she sighs.) So what now.

MULDER: I'll file the report with local PD. We've got my accounts and your autopsy protocol. Then we go back home.

(Fade to black.)

SCENE 7
ALLEGHENY FRONT, PA
JUNE 6
12.08 AM

(Sky full of stars. Camera pans across the sky. One of the points of light is moving, slowly, then faster, arcing down into mountains and woods. Camera, handheld, view shakes, we are in the woods. Muted night noises.

Camera is now focused on the crawlspace entrance at the foot of the mountain. We go in, we see a lot of shadow, indistinguishable in the low light.

We reach the roomlike space where the black oil seeps from the rock. A flame ignites. The black oil burns. Quickly the fire grows to very high temperatures. The rock immediately in contact with the fire turns glassy.)

SCENE 8
WASHINGTON D.C.
JUNE 6

(Scully's apartment. Scully is in bed but not asleep. The clock beside her bed says 1.30. She hears a knocking on her door. Listens. There it is again. She gets up.

Pan to a moment later, Scully is opening the door in pajamas with robe. Mulder is standing outside her door in jeans and black tee shirt. He is holding a bag.)

SCULLY: (Groans.) Mulder, don't tell me you're moving in.

MULDER: (Comes in. Sets down bag by the door. Closes the door behind him.) I woke you up. I'm sorry. (He looks at her for a moment.)

SCULLY: I wasn't really asleep.

MULDER: Scully, get dressed.

SCULLY: What?

MULDER: Just-get dressed. We're going to Pennsylvania.

SCULLY: For what? (Heads for the bedroom.)

MULDER: (Sits on the couch) Harris called Skinner an hour ago. Skinner woke me up. There's been another death, it looks like the victim burned but not via campfire.

SCULLY: (Comes out of bedroom with small bag and dressed in jeans and a white tee shirt, light jacket.) How?

MULDER: Spontaneous combustion, from what Harris says.

(Fade to black.)

SCENE 9
BALD EAGLE MOUNTAIN, PA
JUNE 6
7.00 AM

(Mulder and Scully are talking to Sheriff Harris. They are at what appears to be a research center on the mountain. There is a large wooden building with the sign UPENN GEOLOGY. A Jeep and a Range Rover are parked beside the building. All around them are the signs of PD bustle: Yellow tape, officers bagging a body a distance away. A marked Search and Rescue four-wheel drive with its back door open, revealing transportation for the body.)

MULDER: You said that the victim was a student at U Penn?

HARRIS: She was working on a Master's with the crew here.

SCULLY: And the rest of the crew? While she was out, they were doing what?

HARRIS: They were asleep. Professor Lewiston says it'd been a tough day; they'd been digging and hauling what they found back here. They had dinner around 7.00, had a discussion after dinner until about 9.00, except for Jung Kim, who took a walk after dinner.

MULDER: Did she say where she was going?

HARRIS: Apparently she liked to take walks, but never at night. One of the other students said Kim liked to go down to the dig site, even if they weren't digging.

SCULLY: How far is the dig site from here?

HARRIS: We checked it out. Almost a mile down that trail (Points.)

(Mulder nods at Scully and Harris and starts down the trail.)

SCULLY: Sheriff Harris, I'd like to ride back with you and take a look at the body.

(Scully and Harris turn toward the Search and Rescue vehicle where officers are loading a bagged body and shutting the back door. Fade to black.)

SCENE 10
BALD EAGLE MOUNTAIN, PA
JUNE 6
11.32 AM

(Inside the wooden building, in what appears to be the kitchen. An older man, PROFESSOR LEWISTON, and Mulder are seated at a large table. Lewiston is pouring iced tea into two glasses. Mulder is eating sunflower seeds. Never leave home without it.)

LEWISTON: She was one of the best scholars I'd ever had the privilege to work with, Mr. Mulder.

MULDER: Do you have any idea why she decided to take a walk to the dig site at night?

LEWISTON: (Shaking his head, forehead creased in thought. Hands Mulder a glass of iced tea.) No, I can't say I knew exactly why she took walks down to the dig site.

MULDER: Sheriff Harris said that this was the only time she took a walk to the dig site at night?
Is that true?

LEWISTON: As far as I know, that's true. On our designated rest days we go to town, do errands, sleep in, read in the house. But Jung Kim would invariably take a walk down to the dig site at least for an hour on days off.

MULDER: And you don't know why exactly. Do you have a hypothesis?

LEWISTON: (Looks at Mulder with a smile in his eyes.) You're a quick man, Mr. Mulder. Choice of words doesn't escape you. (Starts to get up.) I want to show you something.

(Fade in to the basement of the wooden house. It is set up as a lab. Work tables with clumps of dirt, labeled. Samples bottled and tagged in wooden racks and trays. Tools.)

LEWISTON: (Turning on a powerful overhead light above one table.) Our work, Mr. Mulder, is painstaking and slow but ambitious. 200 million years ago, the mountains in what is now Pennsylvania were formed when two continents collided. Most of the geology we've done has been to reconstruct using computerized simulations, what exactly happened. As we find data, we key it into our equation.

MULDER: And this is related to Jung Kim's death-how?

LEWISTON: Mr. Mulder, as you saw at the dig site, we bore into the earth to take samples of rock.
Two months ago, we were digging for sample rock in a new area and ran into equipment trouble. The laser drills were strangely breaking down, we tried several times and finally the drill broke. While waiting for new equipment, Jung suggested we find out what manner of rock would be able to break a drill which is designed to cut rock.

MULDER: How could you get to the rock, if your drilling is in hundreds of feet?

LEWISTON: (Smiling eyes.) That's where Jung's acumen proved sharp. She devised a simple robot arm with a clamp at the end, using reshaped parts of the old, broken equipment. Jung Kim was an ingenious mind, Mr. Mulder. She was one of those rare people who thought laterally-all the time.

MULDER: How did she know that she needed what amounted to a hand with opposable thumb?

LEWISTON: I don't know the answer to that one, Mr. Mulder. All I know that out of a few dark deep holes which she knew where exactly to dig, her robot arm retrieved-and did so for weeks-samples of a material which I have never before seen nor believe to be of this earth. (Looks at Mulder pointedly.)

MULDER: Can you show me these samples? (His cell phone rings. He takes it out.) Excuse me, Dr. Lewiston. (Answers the phone.) Mulder.

SCULLY ON THE PHONE: Mulder, it's me. Jung Kim suffered fibrillation of the heart, but there's no evidence why she burned up. I'm forced to put down cause of death as heart failure. I'm finished here, so I'm going to book us a motel for tonight and then drive to see you.

MULDER: Scully, just get a car and call the motel. Wait-(He takes out his badge wallet and peers at a small piece of paper inserted in the clear pocket.) -the Lodge is the Big Valley Number 547-1992. I need you here soonest you can.

(They hang up. Mulder turns to Lewiston, who is unlocking a temperature controlled cabinet built into one wall. He takes out samples and places them onto the worktable nearest to him. Mulder helps him. There are seven large petri dish-like glass containers. Inside each of them is a chunk of what appears to be a gray-and-a-hint-of-purple metal chunk. The chunks are on average the size of Pringles potato chips. Lewiston says nothing. Mulder and he share a glance-Mulder is awed but is trying to hide it. Lewiston has that delight in his eyes again.)

(Fade to black.)

SCENE 11

(Later in the basement. Scully is looking through a very powerful microscope at what appears to be a VERY magnified orderly tangle of fiber, very tightly woven together, each fiber in both woof and warp symmetrical in dimensions. The idea is that it looks like a magnification of good silk-very even, neat, durable work.

Scully finishes focusing and flips a switch to project the image onto a white screen.)

SCULLY: Dr. Lewiston, have you done any tests on these fragments?

LEWISTON: Yes, actually. I sent a sample to a friend of mine at North Carolina State. He sent me back an exciting initial report. Temperature tests results are especially, especially exciting. At the moment, we don't have the facility to simulate any temperature which would damage this material.

MULDER: Meaning what? That this material could withstand even, say entering an atmosphere such as earth's without burning up?

LEWISTON: Yes. (Smiles a full smile.)

SCULLY: What are you saying, Dr. Lewiston? That this must necessarily be extra terrestrial?

LEWISTON: (Nodding.) The rock we bore through, where this material was embedded was dated, again and again. We came up with the same number every time. The rock this material was embedded in is about 100 million years old.

(Scully and Mulder share a Look.)

MULDER: Professor, why would Jung Kim be killed because of these fragments of what may be a space craft?

LEWISTON: Your guess is as good as mine, Mr. Mulder. But it demands of us to believe that we are not alone, and that what is not ours must necessarily belong to another. (He takes a vacuum flask from a cabinet, places one of the metal chunks into it, seals the flask, hands it to Mulder.)

(Fade to black.)

(Cut to later, in the Jeep which Scully rented. Scully is driving. Mulder is mulling over thoughts in his head, eating sunflower seeds. The flask is on his lap.)

SCULLY: (Dials into cell phone. Waits for answer.) Sheriff Harris? It's Agent Scully. Sheriff, I'm going to have to do more work on Jung Kim's body. (Listens.) Yes, thank you. I'm on my way.

MULDER: What is it, Scully?

SCULLY: Mulder, if Jung Kim knew that her robot was necessarily going to pick up something like that (nods at the flask), then it would also be necessarily for her to have a way to know the information.

MULDER: (Midway to cracking a seed, pauses. Turns to Scully.) What are you saying, Scully?

SCULLY: Mulder, she may have an implant. (She turns and shares with him a Look.) If she does, I want to make sure we provide conclusive proof of its connection to this case.

(Fade to Black.)

SCENE 12
VERNA'S DINER, MILESBURG, PA
JUNE 6
5.57 PM

(Scully is still driving the Jeep. She pulls into a parking lot in front of Verna's Diner. She and Mulder get out of the car. Mulder is carrying a small bookbag slung over his shoulder. We see that inside is the flask, its metalic lid is partly visible through a small opening in the bag which is closed with a knotted drawstring.

They walk across the short distance to the diner. A man wearing Amish dress hat and vest almost collides with Scully as he zooms by on Rollerblades. Scully is startled and shares a glance with Mulder, eyebrows raised. Mulder gives her a small smile.

Children yelling heard in the distance, and camera pans to their right, where there is a small, tree-lined field. Five boys and one girl in pigtails are huddled in a circle, all wearing football helmets. The children scatter away and begin to play.

Scully and Mulder reach the diner. Mulder opens the door and lets Scully through first. Verna, the owner, greets them from the counter with a smile. Mulder and Scully head for a booth near the windows and take opposite seats.)

WAITRESS: (Hands them menus.) Hi.

MULDER: Hi. We were thinking of trying the potpie.

WAITRESS: That's a good choice, although if you folks hang around a couple more days, you could taste some really good potpie at the Grange Fair.
SCULLY: The Grange Fair?

WAITRESS: Yeah. Never heard of it? Oh, you must not watch TV. It's everybody comes to Big Valley and camp. Whole families. Some of the cooking there is really famous. It was on TV once.

MULDER: We're only passing through.

WAITRESS: Too bad. This year the champion trout fisher's gonna reveal the fly he's used to catch the 50-pounder. (Shot of Mulder and Scully's faces, mouths slightly open.) Well, I'll get your potpie, and can I get you drinks?

SCULLY: Iced tea?

WAITRESS: OK. Be right back.

SCULLY: I feel like I'm in a Dali painting. Or an Escher print.

MULDER: Why? (He plays with the salt and pepper shakers, moving them like two characters out on a walk towards Scully's hands on the table.)

SCULLY: First we get a souvenir from an origin unknown, embedded in time. Then this. Potpies, Rollerblades, trout fishing championships. (She smiles at him.)

MULDER: (Puts the shakers down and scoots them to a corner near the window as the waitress brings them their iced teas. Sips his tea.) Mmm. I guess with all that we've been through, we're sort of desensitized to the strange and surreal-

SCULLY: --That the real seems strange. (Sips the tea.) Mmm.

MULDER: I like having that knowledge. I like going back to our office in D.C. and working on all these cases that stretch the mind, and then knowing that out there, mingled with whatever next mystery, there is a place like this place. A fair place in the sun. (He is smiling a little, looking at her tenderly.)

SCULLY: (Returns the look and the smile.) I think I like that.

(Waitress comes with the potpies and side salads and serves Mulder and Scully. Nice early evening light in the summertime, orange-yellow-gold. Camera zooms out of the room, over the diner, into the sky so we see the parking lot, the field where kids play, the diner getting smaller and smaller. Panorama shot of beautiful Pennsylvania valley and the rivers and tributaries snaking around to the center of the state, until it becomes a satellite photograph with seemingly two-dimensional patches of color.

As the shot fades to black, we hear a slight, barely perceptible smooth metalic whirr, like a gearless machine hovering over earth. Fade to Black.)

FIN.