4X04 Teliko

[Examining a picture of the victim]

Scully: I'm sorry, I thought you said that Owen Sanders was black.

Dr Bruin: He was.

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Mulder: Hey! I heard you were down here slicing and dicing. Who's the lucky stiff?

Scully: His name is Owen Sanders. He was reported as the fourth kidnap victim in Philadelphia until his body turned up last night looking like this.

Mulder: There's a Michael Jackson joke in here somewhere but I can't quite find it.

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Mulder: Scully, has it occurred to you that this might just be a little PR exercise?

Scully: I'm sorry?

Mulder: To divert attention from the fact that young black men are dying and nobody seems to be able to bring in a suspect. The perception being that nobody cares.

Scully: Mulder, not everything is a labyrinth of dark conspiracy and not everybody is plotting to deceive, inveigle and obfuscate.

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Mulder: Agent Pendrell. Thanks for turning this materials analysis around on such short notice.

Agent Pendrell: Shouldn't we wait for Agent Scully? It's just so I won't have to repeat myself.

Mulder: She's not coming.

Agent Pendrell: Why not.

Mulder: She had a date. [Pendrell looks extremely dejected] Breathe Pendrell... She's with a dead man. She's doing an autopsy.

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Mulder: [on phone] So you've found evidence that this is a disease?

Scully: No. I have identified the effects, I am still looking for the cause.

Mulder: Okay, well why don't you let me know s soon as you find anything out.

Scully: Where are you, Mulder?

Mulder: Off to water the seeds of doubt. Bye bye.

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Marita Covarrubias: I can't help you.

Mulder: You can't or you won't? You made an overture to me, you left an opening. Tell me I'm wrong, tell me there's nothing here and I'll just walk away. Either way I need to know.

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Scully: Where are you going?

Mulder: To find someone who I know plotted to deceive, inveigle and obfuscate.

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Minister Diabria: Even if I tell you what I know, you would never believe it.

Mulder: You'd be surprised at what I believe, Sir.

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Mulder: What kinds of stories?

Minister Diabria: The Teliko. Spirits of the air.

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[Mulder is checking the small lower drawer of a hospital food cart]

Mulder: I think this was the getaway vehicle. He didn't even touch his Jell-O.

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Scully: He's got to be around here somewhere, Mulder. He can't have gotten far.

Mulder: This guy can squeeze into a coffee can, Scully. He could be anywhere.

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Scully: So you're basing this theory on a folk tale.

Mulder: It's just another way of describing the same truths, right? I mean all new truths begin as heresies and then as superstitions. We fear the unknown so we reduce it to the terms most familiar to us. Whether that's a folk tale, or a disease or a conspiracy.

Scully: Mulder, even if you're right, I mean especially if you're right, why would he leave his own country to come here?

Mulder: Free cable...

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[Scully's field journal]

Scully: My conviction remains intact that the mechanism by which Aboah killed and in turn survived, can only be explained by medical science and that science will eventually discover his place in the broader context of evolution. But what science may never be able to explain is our ineffable fear of the alien among us. A fear which often drives us — not to search for understanding — but to deceive, inveigle and obfuscate. To obscure the truth not only from others, but from ourselves.