SEASON 1

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SEASON 5

FIGHT THE FUTURE

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Oh, lord. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING, [GIL]? DON'T DO THIS, [GIL]," moans Evil Computer Voice, as the monitor begins to fill up with gibberish. "BAD COMMAND OR FILE NAME!" Heh. The COS moans and mumbles and begins to stutter. It's as if HAL had submitted a really bad audition tape. The screen and the voice and the blinky red lights all basically go berserk; the elevator doors clunk open and shut in the same shot from Pudge's death drop; TSCRO all over the place. The gang look on with varying expressions (Mulder: awe; Peterson: exasperation/job anxiety; Scully: deranged fatigue). COS calls out melodramatically for Gil, but does not sing "Daisy." "WHYYYYYYYY?" Evil Computer Voice finally moans, on a long fading note, before everything goes black. And the award for worst acting in this episode goes to…the computer! We see another external shot of the Eurisko building, where for some reason all the interior office lights start coming back on. Whatever.

A sunny morning; birds tweet as Mulder and Deep Throat confer in a little—and extremely exposed, I'm thinking—park. Deep Throat, are you trying to get yourself shot? Mulder's perplexed: Gil Bates has mysteriously gone missing, and Mulder's petitioned various government agencies as to his whereabouts, to no avail. Deep Throat rolls his eyes. The shadow government, he points out, can do whatever it wants. "Where is he?" Mulder persists. "In the middle of what we in the trade call 'hard bargaining,'" Deep Throat says. Mulder doesn't think Gil will ever work willingly with the government. I'm distracted by the IMMENSE PAISLEYS on his tie. Seriously, they're huge. Deep Throat points out that the lack of freedom can do funny things to a shoe-eschewing freak like Gil, not to mention the fact that he was a confessed murderer, and Mulder destroyed the only evidence that might have exonerated him. Ooops. Mulder looks chagrined, that persistent little lock of hair falling over his worried forehead. "What else could I have done?" "Nothing, unless you were willing to let the technology survive," Deep Throat tells him. Apparently, the DOD has been on the case for five days, but Gil's virus was thorough; they haven't found a trace. Yet. Mulder doesn't look too convinced.

Cut to a lab, where technicians are poring over computer guts. Peterson technobabbles into a phone, and glumly receives word that in six more hours, they'll have to consign the whole project to the metal shredder. "We'll do what we can, sir," an off-screen tech brown-noses. Peterson sighs and walks off. The camera pans down around a remote corner of the gutted COS…where, suddenly, some little red lights blinky blink on! Dunnn! And, just for old time's sake, a security camera…oh, you know. Peterson's face is superimposed on a snowy monitor screen. "I'm gonna figure this thing out if it kills me," he mutters. He said it, not me. TSCRO!—yes, again, I swear to God!—before FINALLY this episode is over.