Mulder: We wanted to believe. We wanted to call out. On August 20 and September 5, 1977, two spacecraft were launched from the Kennedy Space Flight Center Florida. They were called Voyager. Each one carries a message. A gold-plated record projecting images, music and sounds of our planet. Arranged so that it may be understood if ever intercepted by a technologically-mature extraterrestrial civilization. Thirteen years after its launch, Voyager One passed the orbital plane of Neptune and essentially left our solar system. Within that time, there were no further messages sent. Nor are any planned.
Mulder: We wanted to listen. On October 12, 1992, NASA initiated the high resolution microwave survey. A decade-long search by radio telescope scanning ten million frequencies for any transmission by extraterrestrial intelligence. Less than one year later, first term Nevada senator Richard Bryan successfully championed an amendment which terminated the project.
Mulder: I wanted to believe. But the tools had been taken away. The X-Files had been shut down. They closed our eyes. Our voices have been silenced. Our ears now deaf to the realms of extreme possibilities.
Are you okay, Agent Scully? You kinda sounded… a little spooky.
Mulder: Four dollars for the first hour of parking is criminal. What you’ve got better be worth at least forty-five minutes.
Scully: You know Mulder, from back there you looked like him.
Mulder: Him?
Scully: Deep Throat.
Mulder: He’s dead, Scully. I attended his funeral at Arlington through eight power binoculars from a thousand yards away.
Scully: The X-Files have been terminated, Mulder. We have been reassigned. And what makes you think they care about us anymore anyway?
Mulder: So why have you bothered to come here covertly?
Scully: Because I realized it was the only way that you’d see me.
Mulder: So what do you want?
Scully: To know that you’re all right.
Mulder: Have you ever been to San Diego?
Scully: Yeah.
Mulder: Did you check out the Palomar Observatory?
Scully: No.
Mulder: From 1948 until recently it was the largest telescope in the world. The idea and design came from a brilliant and wealthy astronomer named George Ellerbe Hale. Actually the idea was to presented to Hale one night while he was playing billiards. An elf landed in his window and told him to get money from the Rockefeller Foundation for a telescope.
Scully: And you’re worried that all your life you’ve been seeing elves?
Mulder: In my case, Little Green Men.
Scully: Your sister’s abduction, you held on to that.
Mulder: I’m beginning to wonder if that even happened.
Senator Richard Matheson (Raymond J. Barry): You have to get to the radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. I’ll try to delay them as long as I can, but my guess is you’ll have at least twenty-four hours. But after that I can no longer hold off the Blue Beret UFO retrieval team. And they have been authorized to display terminal force.
Mulder: What am I looking for?
Matheson: Contact.
AD Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi): When did you last see Agent Mulder?
Scully: Yesterday.
Skinner: Where?
Scully: In the bullpen hallway.
Skinner: Did you speak with him?
Scully: No. Is he in some kind of trouble?
Skinner: Agent Mulder failed to appear at his assignment this morning. His whereabouts are unknown.
Scully: Sir, I’ll volunteer my time to assist in any search.
Skinner: She doesn’t know where he is.
Cigarette Smoking Man (William B. Davis): How can you be so sure?
Skinner: Because if she did she wouldn’t be so worried about him.
Dr. Troisky: Looks like the WOW signal.
Scully: The WOW signal?
Dr. Troisky: Ohio State has a radio telescope that conducts electronic searches for extraterrestrial intelligence. In August, 1977, my buddy Jerry Eamon found a transmission on the print-out like this. He was so excited he wrote “wow” in the margins.
Scully: What was there?
Dr. Troisky: A signal. Thirty times stronger than galactic background noise. It came through on the twenty-one centimeter frequency which no satellite transmitters are allowed to use. The signal was intermittent, like Morse code. More importantly, the signal seemed to turn itself on while in the telescope’s beam. The WOW signal is the best evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. This—this is better. Where did you get this?
Scully: Maybe you can tell me. Is that from Ohio State?
Dr. Troisky: Can’t tell. There are a few nickel-and-dime SETI projects around.
Mulder: Deep Throat said Trust No One. It’s hard, Scully. Suspecting everyone, everything. It wears you down. You even begin to doubt what you know is the truth. Before, I could only trust myself. Now I can only trust you. And they’ve taken you away from me. My life up to this point has been about the need to see her again. To see them. But what would I do if they really came?
Scully: I was sure you were dead. Mulder, it’s Scully. Dana Scully. Do you know where you are?
Mulder: They came, Scully. The ones that took her. They were here.
Scully: Here? Or here?
Mulder: On the tapes, the tape. Evidence. Proof. The transmissions, it’s all here. Proof.
Scully: Proof? Of what?
Mulder: Contact. These print outs, it’s here. The man. We’ll have to examine the body. There’ll be more proof.
Scully: Is that them?
Mulder: No, this isn’t it. It’s the Blue Beret craft retrieval team. They’ll kill us. Help me with the body.
Scully: We don’t have time.
Mulder: Help me!
Scully: Mulder, we’re never going to get the body out of the country.
Scully: Mulder we have to go. Evidence is worthless if you’re dead!
Skinner: You left your off-site set-up. Another brick agent had to cover your ass. The entire surveillance, all the months of work on this case, gone. Just like you, gone.
CSM: Your time is over. And you leave with nothing.
Skinner: Get out. I said get the hell out.
Mulder: A minute ago I was a four-bagger. Do you want me to make the arrests?
Skinner: I think we need more to go on. Continue the surveillance.
Mulder: The entire tape is blank.
Scully: You know an electrical surge in the outlet during the storm may have degaussed everything. Erasing the entire tape. You still have nothing.
Mulder: I may not have the X-Files, Scully, but I still have my work. I still have you. I still have myself.