SCENE 9
THE LONE GUNMEN'S OFFICE; WASHINGTON, D.C.
(Mulder and his informants are gathered around a table where the device lay on a green board with a device hooked through it.)
BYERS: It looks a lot like a standard video trap for blocking premium cable channels.
MULDER: What does this one block?
LANGLY: Amazingly, it doesn't seem to block anything.
MULDER: Then what does it do?
FROHIKE: Glad you asked.
(He clears his throat as he and Langly walk over to two carts with televisions and VCRs. Byers slides over on his chair and
takes a channel changer from Frohike.)
MULDER: I bet all you guys were officers in the audio-visual club in high school, huh?
LANGLY: Mm-hmmm.
(The two televisions are turned on and identical test patterns comes up.)
BYERS: This is the straight feed off our bars and tone generator...
(He points to the first one.)
And here are the bars and tone as attenuated through the device.
(He points to the second television.)
MULDER: Looks the same.
FROHIKE: Well, that's what you'd think.
LANGLY: We couldn't discern any difference between the feeds, not until we compared them on the oscilloscope.
(He and Frohike turn on two small monitors on top of the televisions. Two lines come up.)
MULDER: Still looks the same.
FROHIKE: Hold onto your hat, dude.
(He throws two switches and the lines become square blocks. The two monitors then scroll down to two more lines. The first is
straight, the other is thick and shaky.)
We have touchdown.
MULDER: So they're different.
(Langly nods.)
So... they're different.
BYERS: You know the way television works?
MULDER: Yeah, you click it on, you have a picture.
LANGLY: It's a rapid series of still pictures fired against the tube.
BYERS: There's something non-standard here...
(He points to the second television, which also now has the distorted lines at the bottom.)
...in the vertical blanking interval, information that's being added into the spaces between the still pictures.
MULDER: What kind of information?
BYERS: We don't know.
LANGLY: This is as far as we could get with this equipment.
MULDER: Well, can you take it apart?
LANGLY: Not without destroying it completely. That's by design.
(They all look at the strange device.)
BYERS: An amazingly sophisticated design, but all we can say for sure is...
MULDER: This device is emitting a signal.
SCENE 12
MULDER'S APARTMENT; WASHINGTON, D.C.
(Mulder slowly tapes an "X" to his window and starts dribbling his basketball. The phone rings and Mulder sits down and picks
it up.)
MULDER: Mulder.
(Cut to the Lone Gunman's office, where Frohike is on the phone and Byers is in the back. Langly is standing next to Frohike.)
FROHIKE: Mulder, we pulled something off that videotape you found in Scully's room.
(Byers walks towards his compatriots. Cut to Mulder.)
MULDER: What is it?
(Cut to Frohike. Byers starts to flip through a file.)
FROHIKE: Something interesting... but we don't want to talk about it...
(Cut to Mulder.)
...over the phone. "Big Brother" may be listening.
(Frohike hangs up, then Mulder does. He taps the phone on the table, staring at the "X" on his window. He then picks up his
coat and walks out.)
SCENE 13
THE LONE GUNMEN'S OFFICE; WASHINGTON, D.C.
(Frohike, Byers, Langly and Mulder congregate around a videotape player. Frohike speeds through the videotape while it is
playing on fast-forward, showing a psychic network commercial.)
FROHIKE: Here's the tape Scully was reviewing last night. We scanned samples of the tape onto disk.
LANGLY: Digitized it.
BYERS: Using some interpolating freeware we pulled off the net, we were able to blank out visible frames.
MULDER: What am I looking at?
(The picture of the woman on the screen fades into green and red lines.)
LANGLY: Well, this is the actual signal your cable trap device was emitting.
BYERS: Of course, we slowed it down significantly. It's designed to cycle at fifteen flashes per second to induce what is
known as the "photic driving response."
MULDER: Bring it home, boys.
LANGLY: This device is stimulating electrical activity in the brain.
BYERS: Studies into subliminal influence have shown a correlation between heightened suggestibility and the manipulation of
this response.
MULDER: Mind control?
LANGLY: Fifty-seven channels of it.
BYERS: Tachistoscophic images, like they used to sell popcorn at the movies. Both Russian and American scientists have been
working with it for decades.
FROHIKE: Not to mention Madison Avenue.
MULDER: The naked lady in the ice cube.
FROHIKE: Ah, one of my personal favorites.
MULDER: Why wasn't I affected?
(The Lone Gunmen turn to face him. Langly sighs.)
FROHIKE: That's the one thing we haven't figured out yet.
MULDER: This, uh... subliminal signal, could color be a factor in it?
(Everyone looks at Byers.)
BYERS: Maybe.
MULDER: I'm red-green color blind.
BYERS: His inability to perceive the color red could render him immune to the psychotropic effects.
(Mulder's phone rings.)
LANGLY: But why design a color-dependent signal?
FROHIKE: Why not? Red-green color blind...
(Mulder answers his call.)
MULDER: Mulder.
(Mulder listens in as his confidants continue to talk amongst themselves.)
...affects only a small percentage of the male population.
BYERS: Which still leaves the vast majority of the American public vulnerable to it's effects.
MULDER: I'll be right there.
(He hangs up and starts to the door.)
FROHIKE: What happened?
MULDER: Maryland State Police. They think they've found Scully.
(He opens the door.)
FROHIKE: Is she okay?
MULDER: No, um... they think maybe I should come down and I.D. the body.
