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FIGHT THE FUTURE

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But then they don't care anymore, because when Mulder starts the car, the gas pedal depresses on its own, the locks lock, and the car squeals backwards. Mulder frantically tries the brake and the door handle, to zero avail. Finally he just hollers at Scully to hang on, and they smash into an oncoming car and end up in a hedge by the side of the road (at least, their stunt doubles do). Everyone's OK, except for Scully's hair, which is suddenly a bowl cut. At her window, Lauren stares at them and then, when she sees them looking, yanks her curtains shut. It's almost like she KNOWS something.

Garage. And here, 16:15, is where we get the glorious full-body shot of Scully's insane outfit. Black double-breasted skirt suit, ORANGE blouse with big pointy collar, WHITE TIGHTS, and hideous black pumps. And a briefcase bigger than she is. Let me just drink it in for a moment. Oh, I have such love for these ghastly wardrobe selections of the early days. Mulder, looking perfectly presentable and not at all dated (well...the hair, a bit), is inspecting their busted rental car. "Hi," says Scully, and Mulder looks up and says "Hi," and it's somehow very cute to me, because they never do that, man. Scully says she's fine except for a standing-in-line-at-the-DMV-sized headache (good line). Mulder says his headache is IRS-sized. Hee hee, banter. Mulder says the malfunctioning car is new -- only a hundred miles on it. Scully concludes that it was tampered with, but Mulder says the mechanic found nothing wrong with it. He tells her to check out the lights, which are glowing. Scully doesn't get it: "...They're on." But they're not on. They're a ghost! Or something. They're chock full of glowy electrostatic charge, as a matter of fact. Just like the dead guy's twitchy arm! The connection: Lauren. Scully reminds him that Lauren was never out of their sight at her house. Mulder stands to his full lanky height and takes a deep breath: it's time for his Crazy Theory (That Turns Out To Be Right) Of The Week. What if it were possible to raise the body's electrostatic charge to such a high level that you could manipulate objects? Scully says that your body would melt, only she says it in a more sciencey way. Mulder brings up his many, many X-files featuring stuff moving around in a ghostly fashion. He says that people with this power may not even know they have it. "Are you saying Lauren Kyte crashed our car?" Scully says -- you guessed it -- skeptically. "Either that," says Mulder, pausing for maximum craziness effect, "or a poltergeist." "They're heeeeeeeere," Scully says. Always with the cutting-edge topical humor, our Scully. Put her on Best Week Ever right now!

Scully trots after Mulder and reviews the facts -- two "mideast extremists" (remember when that was a novel idea for a random villain? Sigh) were killed after assaulting a woman who works for a company that manufactures parts for the Defense Department (wait -- it does? Did we know that? I thought it was just a boring company that manufactured boringness). The paranormal activity could be explained by blah blahbbity blah. Someone else may have done the weird stuff -- "maybe the same person that we saw in those ATM photos!" Oh, saints preserve us. Blurry Witch Hat did not sabotage your car's brakes, Scully. (Except it actually did, but seriously, it's really, really goofy that Scully keeps talking about the blurry witch hat smudge as if it's a person.) Scully refers to Blurry Witch Hat as Lauren's accomplice. Just as she says it, the car's lights go out. Mulder hoists his jacket over his shoulder and gives Scully a Very Significant Look. Scully pretends not to notice.

HTG, Manufacturer of Important Parts of Something. Mulder and Scully creepily sit in the car and spy on Lauren as she gets out of her car and goes to yell at a guy spray-painting a new name over a parking space. He's getting rid of Howard Graves's name and replacing it with the name of some other corporate bigwig by the name of Tom Braidwood. Damn you, Braidwood! I amuse myself by picturing Tom Braidwood in a suit sitting at a desk being all businessy. It doesn't work very well, and I keep ending up with the image of him in the black tux with the flowers in One Breath. That's about as corporate as I've ever seen Fro. Anyway, Lauren's really upset that they're painting over Howard's name. She shoos the painter away and says she'll take care of it as Mulder and Scully ponder. "So who is Howard Graves, anyway?" Mulder asks.

Cue the microfilm! I guess that high-tech computer business was a little over their heads. They're back at I guess the Philly field office; it looks like the same office from before. Scully finds an article about Howard Graves's suicide. She reaches back and taps Mulder on the hand without looking (I love how she does that), and he peers over her shoulder. They learn (finally) that Lauren was Graves's secretary, and Mulder can't help pointing out that three people in a month have died that were associated with Lauren. Mulder, you're barking up the wrong tree here, babe. Listen to your partner -- believe it or not, she's on the right track blaming everything on the blurry witch hat.

More spying on Lauren, this time while she's at Graves's grave, with some flowers and some extremely high-waisted pants. After she leaves, Moulder and Skully (see? They're not just annoyingly common misspellings, they're also grave puns!) sidle up to the grave and take a gander themselves. Next to the departed Howard is Sarah Lynn Graves, born 1966, died 1969. Aw. Gravestones with close-together dates like that always catch me by surprise and are so sad. Behind them, some guy is planting some flowers in an extremely well-lit, stagy manner, so it's no surprise at all when Mulder goes to ask the guy about the Graveses' graveses (I CAN'T HELP IT, OK? They NAMED the dead guy GRAVES). The groundskeeper, who's dressed like he's on safari, overshares that he goes to every funeral and is "the last person to see them put to rest." Congratulations! You're a creepy old bastard. He explains that Sarah was Howard's daughter, and she drowned when Howard didn't latch the pool gate one day. A year later, his wife left him. Well, that pretty much sucks. Scully and Mulder go back to the grave. "She was only three years old," says Special Agent Mathematical Genius. "If she had lived, she'd be Lauren's age," says Special Agent Spelling Things Out For The Non-Mathematical Geniuses Among The Viewing Audience. I wonder if that fact will have any significance?