X FILES LYCEUM

310 731

by Jo and John

APOLOGY HAS BECOME POLICY

"To the best of my knowledge, humans were not used in any of these experiments."
Major-General Hitoshi Kikuchi Unit 731, May 1947

SYNOPSIS

PERKEY, WV
MULDER'S APARTMENT
TRAIN
FBI HEADQUARTERS

Scully searches for the truth behind the government's involvement with secret experiments while Mulder is trapped aboard a train holding what he thinks is an alien-human hybrid. Time's running out as the train is rigged with an explosive device.

SCULLYVISION

Points for Scully? She's tough and takes charge in this episode, which is quite grand to witness.

Points against? When X comes knocking, she draws her gun and calls him exactly what he is. He manages to rather easily take her gun away from her long enough to point her in the right direction.

Points for? LovelyScully has Pendrell reduced to a smitten, mumbling idiot.

Points against? When she is captured at the Hansen's Disease facility she asks twice as many questions to The Elder than he asks her. As usual, she doesn't get many answers.

Points For? She nearly saves Mulder's ass.

Points against? X comes along and really saves it.

Scully now feels that Mulder has all the proof of the truth he needs. That being, it's humans that are doing the abducting and experimenting, not aliens. She accuses Mulder of "doing their work for them." Quite a powerful statement.

OH, COME ON!

Dr. Zama's brief case would have a lock that could be easily broken, but with something that important... there's no exploding devise or something less... evil... if some unauthorized person tries to open it?

THINGS LEARNED

A gunshot wound to the stomach is probably the most painful and the slowest way to die

WRITER
Frank Spotnitz

Nice continuation of the first, but loses a bit of steam, except for when it was close to the time of the bomb going off. The scene with the Elder and Scully was welcomed, but sadly didn't come to much.

DIRECTOR
Rob Bowman

Keeps his momentum going with snarky remarks between Mulder and Red Haired Man and Scully's agitation at Mulder not believing her. Facial expressions tell it all, and Rob showcased them nicely.

USUAL THINGS
Scully Uses Huge Flashlight
Mulder Loses Gun, and gives his back-up gun away
Mulder Gets His Ass Kicked more than usual
Scully Mistrusts X but calls on his help anyway
Bathroom, Zama is killed
Scully Drives!
"Mulder, it's me."
Cell Phones
Mulder's Apartment
1013
Scully Saves Mulder with the code
X Kills Someone
Alien, or alien-human hybrid anyway

RECURRING CHARACTERS
X
Red-Haired Man
Pendrell
The Elder

SCORE CARD FOR SAVING EACH OTHER'S ASS

Scully 8 - Mulder 6

She did give him the code to disarm the bomb, or did she?

POINT/COUNTERPOINT

SCULLY: Tick, tick, Mulder? What was that all about? Did you think I had simply paused the video to finish my popcorn?
MULDER: No, but hey, time was running out, and you were hanging out watching that alien autopsy video. Again! I thought you didn't even like it.
SCULLY: Just trying to make sure you got your money's worth.
MULDER: Well, I'll say I did. It saved my life.
SCULLY: I'm thinking you still deserve at least a partial refund.

ATHENAEUM

After Scully told Mulder about the experiments took place at a Hansen's Disease facility, he asked, "Hansen's Disease? What's that?"

She told him to go look it up as she went for the door of the office, which still didn't hold a desk for her or where the door still didn't bear her name.

"I know what it means Scully," he lied.

She repeated that he should look it up before leaving abruptly, probably because he hadn't believed her story.

Soon he was down in the musty medical section of the Athenaeum.

"Oh, you mean Leprosy," said the Curator.

"Uh, yes, right." Mulder glanced at the Curator. "Damn it, Scully. This is the second time you've sent me here to learn a lesson... from you."

"That's Doctor Scully, Agent Mulder."

"Okay, Doctor, your attentive student awaits."

Even though the Curator looked exactly like Scully, he/she/it turned quickly in a way that didn't remind Mulder of Scully at all.

"We don't know when Leprosy first appeared. Some believe there are mentions of a disease that may be leprosy as far back as 1550 BC in ancient Egypt. Indian writings from around 600 BC most likely do mention the disease. Sadly, Biblical stories equate leprosy with sin. Jesus healed people who were blind, but he "cleansed" the lepers."

Mulder watched and listened very carefully to Doctor Scully as she was on a roll.

"Even recently in this country, leprosy was feared and not understood by the general public. People with the disease were shunned from society and confined to leper colonies. Some were transported in boxcars labeled "FREIGHT" and shipped off to "pest houses." Many people believed that people with leprosy were highly contagious throughout their lives. It was also believed that leprosy was a scourge bestowed by God upon sinners. The idea that it was a human disease was finally disproved when it was discovered in armadillos. That discovery led to much research and was very instrumental in combating the disease. In the year 2000, there were 91 cases reported in the US. The incidence is higher in other countries."

"You're not Scully," Mulder said.

"Have you heard even one word I've said?"

"Who are you?"

"I told you. Doctor Scully."

"You're an alien shape-shifter, aren't you?" Mulder asked excitedly, thinking he had pinned the Curator down.

"I don't appreciate being called names," he/she/it huffed.

"That would explain why you appear as a different Curator each time I come here. You're a shape-shifter that's been feeding me misinformation, haven't you? You're the bounty hunter."

"Oh, more names! I hope your partner finds you a lot more charming than I do," Dr. Scully said, turning quickly in a very un-Scully manner, and vanished among the book stacks.

QUOTES

SCULLY I want to know what's on that train.
X It doesn't matter now.
SCULLY Our government is operating a secret railroad. They put something on that train in West Virginia; something living.
X What more is there to know?
SCULLY What the Japanese have to do with it. How a man named Ishimaru is involved.
X That I don't know.
Scully pulls her gun on him.
SCULLY Don't tell me you don't know, you smug son of a b-
He grabs the gun from her.
X There are limits to my knowledge.
SCULLY I don't have time for your convenient ignorance.
X What were you going to do? Shoot me? Just like the men that shot your sister?
SCULLY You know them, too?
X You want to know what's on that train? Who killed your sister? You find out what they put in your neck.
SCULLY The implant.
X It holds more than I could ever tell you. Maybe everything you need to know.

MULDER I need access to that quarantine car you picked up in West Virginia.
CONDUCTOR Sorry, can't help you.
MULDER I'm a federal agent, sir. I need you to open that car.
CONDUCTOR I would if I could, but I don't have access myself. We pick these cars up from time to time. Whatever they're carrying, they never let us know.
MULDER Well, somebody's got to be able to get in that car.
CONDUCTOR We've got a doctor on board, came on back at Queensgate. He might have something to do with that, I saw him back there, checking the door.
MULDER What's his name?
CONDUCTOR Japanese fellow. Doctor... Shiro Zama. Traveling with another party, it says, but I got the impression he was alone.

MULDER Why did I study French in high school?

CONDUCTOR What am I supposed to tell the doctor when he asks where it is?
MULDER If he finds you before I find him...
He pulls out a gun strapped to his ankle.
MULDER I want you to make him lie on the ground till I get back, okay? You understand? Have you ever used a gun before?
CONDUCTOR No.
MULDER I just want you to point it at him. Don't pull the trigger. That will kind of give away the game.
CONDUCTOR What if he runs?
MULDER Just make sure he runs my way.

PENDRELL I'm feeding the chip impulses. The graph is recording its output, which, when I remove the current, changes slightly but continues. This means the neural network is storing information.
SCULLY Biological information?
PENDRELL That was my first guess. You've already told me the chip was placed subcutaneous under the back of the neck, right?
PENDRELL So it makes sense that it would be recording impulses traveling to and from the central nervous system.
SCULLY But what?
PENDRELL Look at the graph. Those are what we call reverbatory loops. They indicate the presence of circular neuronal activity in the brain.
SCULLY Memory formation.
PENDRELL Yeah, the chip seems to be mimicking that process, replicating the memory process in the brain.
SCULLY Like a computer hard drive.
PENDRELL Yeah, but no hard drive we've ever seen. This kind of neural network could be not only collecting information, but artificially replicating a person's mental processes.
SCULLY You could know a person's every thought.
PENDRELL Frightening.
PENDRELL Anyway, I showed the chip to some of my techheads, and they weren't as blown away as I thought they'd be.
SCULLY They've seen this technology before?
PENDRELL Well, they've seen neural nets before, but never one as complex as that. Nor are they likely to anytime soon.
SCULLY What do you mean?
PENDRELL The chip's so delicate that I effectively destroyed it when I began working on it, but I found something in the silicon matrix, what I believe is the name of the manufacturer.
SCULLY It's Japanese, isn't it?
PENDRELL How'd you know?
SCULLY Oh, it was just a guess.
PENDRELL Well, I checked for you. I assumed you'd want me to. There's no record or information on the manufacturer either here or in Japan, except this. I had Fed Ex, UPS, the postal service, every commercial courier go through their computer records. They turned up one shipment, sent to a Doctor Shiro Zama at a research facility out in Perkey, WV.
SCULLY Well done, Agent Pendrell. Keep up the good work.
PENDRELL Hey, thanks. Keep it up yourself.
Scully leaves.
PENDRELL "Keep it up yourself." What a doof.

SCULLY Who are you? Don't worry. I'm not going to hurt you. I'm an FBI agent.
ESCALANTE We, we live here. We've lived here at the facility most of our lives.
SCULLY What kind of facility?
ESCALANTE The Hansen's Disease Research Facility.
SCULLY Hansen's Dis... do you mean this is a leper colony?
ESCALANTE No more, they... the facility's closed now.
SCULLY Look. I came here looking for a Dr. Shiro Zama.
ESCALANTE Dr. Zama isn't here anymore. None of the medical staff is.
SCULLY Where did they go?
ESCALANTE Well, they all left right before the death squads started coming.
SCULLY What death squads?
ESCALANTE That's who we've been hiding from. We thought you'd come to kill us, like they killed all the others.
SCULLY How many have been killed?
ESCALANTE Hundreds. All but us.
SCULLY I don't understand how there could have been hundreds of people here when leprosy is supposed to be a treatable disease.
ESCALANTE Well, it is. Me and the other people back at the hiding place? We're the last. Our disfigurement forced us into the camps before there was a treatment.
SCULLY Who were the others?
ESCALANTE We never knew. They began arriving several years ago but they were kept apart from us.
SCULLY And they had Hansen's disease?
ESCALANTE No, they had the Hansen's deformities. Dr. Zama would round them up in groups for treatment, and then the ones that returned always came back worse with terrible burns all over their bodies. It's over there.
SCULLY Oh, my God.
ESCALANTE There are more of these pits. They just dump the bodies on top of each other like they were garbage.

RHM You idiot!
MULDER Put your hands in the air and turn around!
RHM You have no idea what you're dealing with here.
MULDER Well, maybe you should've filled me in before you tried to kill me. Now, who are you?
RHM No. Who are you?
MULDER Answer me!
RHM I work for the National Security Agency.
MULDER The NSA? Since when did they start issuing you guys piano wire instead of guns?
RHM Since we learned there's a bomb on this train.
MULDER There's something on this train, but it's not a bomb. Throw that here.
RHM This car is wired to an explosive device. It armed automatically when I entered the car.
MULDER Why?
RHM Because of what's in that room. Because if the man responsible for it couldn't get it out of the country, he would rather kill it than let it live.
MULDER So you killed him.
RHM The only humane alternative, given the circumstances.
MULDER Put your hands in the air.
RHM This bomb could be wired to anything in the car. The slightest concussion could set it off. If you use that weapon, you take your chances.
MULDER I'll take my chances.

ELDER I'd like to speak with Miss Scully alone.
SCULLY How did you know my name?
ELDER I know most everything about you, Dana.
SCULLY What are you talking about?
ELDER I think you know.
SCULLY Who are you? What is this place?
ELDER This was one of the most frightening places on the earth. A place where society sent its monsters to live in shame and isolation. Now, their disease is all but conquered. Science has eliminated thousands of years of misery.
SCULLY I've seen your methods of elimination. What happened to the man who was with me in the forest? What about the people who were in this room?
ELDER They had been exposed.
SCULLY Exposed to what?
ELDER The same thing all these victims have been exposed to him, victims of an inhuman project run by a man named Zama.
SCULLY You mean Ishimaru. You hid him here after the war. He stayed here, and he continued his experiments.
ELDER The ruler of the world is no longer the country with the bravest soldiers, but the greatest scientists. Unfortunately, Ishimaru began to conduct his work in secret, not sharing with those who had risked much in giving him his asylum.
SCULLY What was he exposing these people to?
ELDER Terrible things.
SCULLY What kinds of things? Have I been exposed?
ELDER I don't know.
SCULLY Who knows?
ELDER Please, I'd like to show you something that will give you your answers.

CONDUCTOR Do you want us to try prying this door open?
RHM I wouldn't recommend that.
MULDER No.

RHM I'd assume Zama would be smarter than to give me the entrance and the exit code.
MULDER What?
RHM He knew he was going to die. When I used the code to enter the car, it activated the bomb. You use it again, it'll almost certainly set it off.
MULDER There's a bomb on this train, where is it?
RHM I don't know. It could be anywhere.
MULDER No, it couldn't be anywhere. If you activated it coming in here, it's got to be on this car.
RHM You're probably right.
MULDER Where do you think it is?
RHM I don't know.
MULDER You know what I think? I think you're a liar. I don't think you work for the NSA, and I don't think there's a bomb on this train.
RHM You're choosing a hell of a way to find out!
MULDER Shut up!

ELDER Mr. Mulder, I have someone here who'd like to speak with you.
SCULLY Mulder, it's me.
MULDER Scully, where are you?
SCULLY I'm in West Virginia.
MULDER Who dialed this number?
SCULLY Mulder, we've gotten involved in something, but it's not at all what you think.
MULDER What are you talking about?
SCULLY Whatever is on that train is not alien.
MULDER You're wrong, Scully.
SCULLY Mulder, Ishimaru Zama. He was experimenting on innocent human subjects. He'd been doing it for years. Operating out of a leper colony.
MULDER Well, whatever his name was, Scully, he's dead. I don't think this has anything to do with lepers.
SCULLY The leper colony was just a front. The tests weren't just on lepers. They were on the homeless, on the insane. They were brought here, and they were subjected to diseases and radiation tests.
MULDER Who told you this?
SCULLY The man who handed me the phone.
MULDER Well, why do you believe him?
SCULLY Because of what he's shown me.
MULDER What? What's he shown you?
SCULLY Mulder, I'm standing in a train car just like the one in your alien autopsy video, only I realize that I've been here before.
MULDER What are you talking about, Scully?
SCULLY This is where they brought me, Mulder. This is where they put the implant in my neck, in one of these cars.
MULDER Scully.
SCULLY It all makes sense, Mulder. Ishimaru Zama, he was using the secret railroad to conduct his tests across the country. The women in Allentown, they all remember these cars.

SCULLY What I am saying, Mulder, is that there is no such thing as alien abduction. It is just a smoke screen, happily created by our government to coverup the biggest lie of all.
MULDER What about the UFO I saw them working on?
SCULLY That wasn't a UFO, Mulder. It was a piece of a Russian nuclear sub that was raised. More lies.
MULDER How can you be so sure?
SCULLY Because I have what I told you I needed, Mulder, proof. Two weeks ago, the President made a public apology for secret radiation tests that had been conducted on innocent citizens up until 1974. Only, guess what?
MULDER Those tests never ended.
SCULLY Mulder, listen to me. You have got to stay out of that train car.
MULDER Why?
SCULLY Because there is a bomb on board. Mulder, if that bomb detonates, thousands of people are going to die of hemorragic fever. That's what the test subject inside has been exposed to.
MULDER Well, Scully, you're a little late. I'm locked inside that train car.
SCULLY Well, then we've got to get you out of there, cuz that device is on a timer.

SCULLY How much time do you have?
MULDER Little over an hour and a half.
SCULLY Look, Mulder, you've got to get them to stop that train so we can get you off of it. They want you to tell the engineer to stop at the next station.
MULDER Why?
SCULLY So we can get a bomb squad out there and evacuate the train.

ELDER Where's the next stop?
SCULLY It's not on the map.

MULDER Where are we?
CONDUCTOR Iowa. We passed Murray station about twenty minutes ago.
MULDER All right, listen to me. I want you to get word to the engineer that there's a bomb on this car.
CONDUCTOR A bomb?
MULDER That's right. I want you to tell him not to make his next scheduled stop and to reroute. You understand?
CONDUCTOR I think so.
MULDER I want you to tell him to choose a place as far away from a populated area as possible and unhook this car.
RHM What are you doing?
MULDER Let's move into the corner over there, now.
RHM You're going to get us both killed.
MULDER I want you to kneel down and put your hands behind your back.
RHM They'll never be able to find us in time.
MULDER If what's on this train is important as I think it is, they will.
RHM You're going to die, you know that?
MULDER What do you care? You were trying to kill me anyway.

MULDER Scully, let me tell you, you haven't seen America till you've seen it from a train.
SCULLY Damn it, Mulder. What happened?
MULDER We're not going to make that station, Scully.
SCULLY Yeah, I figured that. Do you have any idea where you are?
MULDER No, but I'm sure they'll find us. We probably lit up every spy satellite in this hemisphere. It was the only thing to do, Scully. If you're right about what's on this car, an explosion outside a populated area would reduce the risks.
SCULLY Mulder, if I'm right, they're not going to want to find you, but you don't think I'm right, do you?
MULDER We'll have to wait and see.
SCULLY We're not waiting for anything, Mulder. We got to get you out of there as fast as we can.
MULDER I'm fielding all offers and suggestions.

MULDER They're not going to come, are they?
RHM I said you were making a mistake.
MULDER Tell me something. You got on this train to kill Dr. Zama. Then what? What were your orders then? Who are you protecting? Unless that bomb is as phony as you are, we've both got about half an hour to live. Is that part of the plan?
RHM They don't make provisions for saving my life.
MULDER Well, what about that thing locked back there? What provisions were made for saving its life?
RHM I don't know. I wasn't expected to fail.
MULDER You know what it is, don't you? You're going to die for that thing. Is it important enough to die for? What is it, a plague carrier? A leper? We're both going to die in here. The difference is, I'm going to die quickly. As an employee of the National Security Agency, you should know that a gunshot wound to the stomach is probably the most painful and the slowest way to die, but I'm not a very good shot and when I miss, I tend to miss low.
RHM It's a weapon.
MULDER A weapon? What kind of a weapon?
RHM Ask yourself, my friend. What could be more valuable than star wars? More valuable then the atomic bomb or the most advanced biological weapons?
MULDER A standing army immune to the effects of those weapons. That's what Dr. Zama did, didn't he? He came up with an immunity to those weapons, and he was trying to smuggle that thing back to his own country to share the science. Only our government isn't in the mood to share, right? They've been doing experiments since World War II, tests on innocent civilians, but Zama succeeded where the others had failed. And that thing in there... That's no innocent civilian. It's not a leper, either. It's an alien-human hybrid, isn't it?
RHM Then again, if that were true, you'd have expected someone would have been here by now to save it, wouldn't you?

SCULLY Mulder? I think I've got something here.
MULDER What is it?
SCULLY I think I may have a code for you. I'm watching Zama punch it into a keypad in one of the train cars.
MULDER What are you watching?
SCULLY Your alien autopsy video.
MULDER You mean I might get my 29.95's worth after all?
SCULLY I've got six minutes left. Is that what you have?
MULDER Let's hope not. What's the code?
SCULLY One.
SCULLY One, zero.
MULDER Wait, are you there?
SCULLY Yeah, yeah. One, zero, one.
MULDER One, zero, one.
SCULLY And a three, then a three.
MULDER Three, three.
SCULLY I can't see the last number clearly. His hand gets in the way.
MULDER Tick-tick, Scully.
SCULLY I know, I'm sorry... I think it's a one.
MULDER You think it's a one? Are you sure?
SCULLY Yeah, yeah, I'm pretty sure.
MULDER One.

SCULLY Are there any satellite photos you can get your hands on?
MULDER Senator Matheson hasn't returned my phone calls. His aides say he's out of the country.
SCULLY Well, the administrator at the hospital where you were admitted said that someone had called and alerted them to your location. Now, I went through the phone records myself, and the call was placed from a phone booth in Blue Earth, IA.
MULDER Did you locate the briefcase that Zama left on the train?
SCULLY Yeah. I got it right here.
MULDER This doesn't look like the same briefcase.
SCULLY It's the one they gave me, the one they said you gave to the conductor.
MULDER These aren't the same journals. They've all been rewritten.
SCULLY Mulder.
MULDER They're getting away with it, Scully.
SCULLY They've gotten away with it, Mulder. The bodies at the leper colony have all been removed.
MULDER I know what I saw on that train car. It wasn't a leper, and it wasn't human.
SCULLY And I know what I saw at that research facility. It was barely recognizable as human. Don't you see, Mulder? You're doing their work for them. You're chasing aliens that aren't there, helping them to create a story to cover the shameful truth, and what they can't cover, they apologize for. Apology has become policy.
MULDER I don't need an apology for the lies. I don't care about the fictions they create to cover their crimes. I want them accountable for what did happen. I want an apology for the truth.

THE END