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FIGHT THE FUTURE

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Meanwhile, Sheriff Dubious is shrugging Ruby off as a runaway. "It wouldn't be the first time Ruby Morris ran away from home," he scoffs. He included Darlene's koo-koo story in his report, but no evidence at the campsite suggested kidnapping, let alone aliens. "Lemme tell you something: Darlene's little girl was no prom queen," he sneers. "I can't count the number of times I pulled her outta parked cars, or found her puking her guts out by the side of the road." Oh my lands! What's the matter with kids today? It was only a matter of time, the sheriff asserts, before "something bad" happened to Ruby, and he isn't going to waste his time on it. Well, that's some stand-up community policing, there.

Outside, Scully informs Mulder that she just thinks "it's a good idea not to antagonize local law enforcement." Good luck with that, sis. "Who, me? I'm Mr. Congeniality," Mulder protests. "You never know, we might need his help one of these days," Scully counters. "I'll send him a Bundt cake," Mulder grumbles. That's such a weird, hilarious line…maybe ad-libbed? Mulder, you can send me a Bundt cake any time at all. Does that sound dirty, when I say it? A dirty, dirty, delicious Bundt cake. I gotcher Bundt cake right…uh…what was I talking about? Right. Okay. Moose and Squirrel are about to get into their car when Mulder spots a note on the windshield. "I'M ACROSS THE STREET. FOLLOW ME," it reads. Mulder passes it to Scully, and the two of them scan the opposite sidewalk. As soon as she catches their eye, a girl in dark clothing turns away and darts into the nearest doorway; Mulder and Scully jog across the street and follow her into what turns out to be a library.

When they locate her in the stacks, the girl quickly skitters into the next aisle and addresses them through the shelving. "You're looking for Ruby, right?" Who is she, Scully wants to know: a friend of Ruby's? "Ruby didn't have friends," the girl mutters. "She just had people she liked to hang with." "And she liked to hang out with you?" Scully parrots, air quotes audible in her voice. Yes, Scully, I believe that's what the kids are calling it these days: this hanging out folderol. I'm betting this Bad Girl actress and Gillian Anderson are the same age, somehow. Anyway. Bad Girl intimates that Ruby was supposed to meet up with her boyfriend, Greg Randall, at the lake the night she disappeared. "They had stuff to talk about," she says, not at all cryptically. "Greg got Ruby pregnant." At this, Scully turns around goggle-eyed to loo k at Mulder, all merciful heavens, a knocked-up teenager! Oh, Young Scully, you are a little lamb lost in the wood. Greg and Ruby's plans for dealing with the pregnancy seemed to consist of leaving town, according to Bad Girl. "Do you know Greg from school?" Scully asks, clinging to the social order in this mad, mad, topsy-turvy world of aliens and illegitimate pregnancies. "Greg? School?" snickers Bad Girl. "I don't think so. All he ever did since we met him is pour beer. The Pennsylvania Pub."

Behind Mulder and Scully, Marian the Librarian—who may or may not have been hanging on every word—suddenly drops a big old armload of multiple volumes of the Time-Life Mysteries of the Unknown series all over the floor with a crash. Everybody jumps, and when Mulder and Scully look back through the stacks, their informant has disappeared. They run around the shelving into the next aisle, but she's nowhere in sight. My word—for a Bad Girl, she certainly knows her way around the library!

Scores of Harleys parked outside the Pennsylvania Pub set the scene. Bleary, unintelligible blues-rock plays as Mulder and Scully enter, and hilariously dork on over to the bar in their little suits. Ha! I could watch this tiny bit over and over again; in fact, I do. On the soundtrack, some unseen joker blurts something that sounds like "Oh, we got a REAL girl here!" as Scully passes, which makes me laugh and laugh. The white tights are apparently not fooling that guy. Mulder adjusts his tie nervously. "Excuse me," he calls out to the bartender. "Do you know where we could find Greg Randall?" The bartender is a total Hey, It's That Guy from probably half a dozen other meathead/biker/heavy roles. "Who's askin'?" he wants to know, and Mulder badges him. The barkeep is nonplussed: "What kind of trouble has he gotten himself into now?" Turns out Greg called in sick three weeks ago, and hasn't been seen since. "If you find him, you tell him he's fired," Bartender grumps. Scully primly hands over their contact information, which Bartender tucks into the pocket of his (naturally) leather vest. This move exposes his heavily tattooed upper arm, where there's some elaborate flowered ink that looks fairly genuine, and beneath it an extremely cartoony drawing of a spaceship. "Hey, that's a nice tattoo," Mulder says. (It…isn't.) "What is that?"

"What's it look like?" the bartender snarks impatiently. "A flyin' saucah," David Noo Yawks. Everyone is suffering from Accent Drift, in this episode! "You don't really believe in that stuff, do you?" Mulder goes on, baiting the guy. "I take it you don't?" the bartender asks, getting menacingly quiet. "No, I think it's just a bunch of crazy people howling at the moon," Mulder says, delivering the line about as convincingly as the stupid tattoo is rendered. The bartender gets all mystical, suggesting that Mulder "ride with" him and his biker buddies sometime—ha ha ha! I would buy a ticket to see that!—to Lake Okobogee, maybe see some things that would change his mind. Then he pulls back his scraggly long hair to expose his right ear. Eww! It's all burnt and jacked up and gross, just a knot of scar tissue on the side of his head. "Yo u can get a killer sunburn in the middle of the night," he adds. Mulder gawks, looking a tiny bit thrilled. Scully looks…less so. I am not sure her little feet can reach the floor, from that barstool. At any rate, girl, we know how you get with a couple of gin-and-tonics under your belt. Temperance is probably the right call, here.