6ABX02 Drive

Virgil Nokes: Yeah?

Scully: Uh, Virgil Nokes? I'm Agent Scully. This is Agent Mulder. We're with the FBI.

Virgil Nokes: Jehovah's Witness?

Scully: No, sir. Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Mulder: But we do have a free copy of the Watchtower for you, if you'd like.

Scully: Uh, sir, this is just a routine check but, uh, we understand that you recently placed an order for 5,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertiliser.

Virgil Nokes: Oh, you people. Come on in. [He makes a half-hearted attempt to open the door] Sugar Beets.

Scully: Excuse me?

Virgil Nokes: I grow sugar beets. Figure I got better things to do with my fertiliser than go around blowing Government buildings sky high.

Scully: Yes well, as we said sir, this is just routine.

Mulder: [to Scully] So routine it numbs the mind.

---

Mulder: [on mobile phone] Thank you Captain, that's no problem. We'd be happy to help. Uh huh.

Scully: Happy to help what?

Mulder: See you soon. [He hangs up]

Scully: Mulder, we're not going to Nevada.

Mulder: Come on, Scully. Just one quick side trip.

Scully: No. Sorry, Mulder. We have a whole new assignment.

Mulder: Running down people that buy fertiliser? This is scut work, bozo work — this is the FBI equivalent of being made to wear an orange jumpsuit and pick up trash by the side of the highway — they mean to humiliate us.

Scully: Look, Mulder, like it or not, humiliated or not, we're on domestic terrorism now and, yes, this is... This is a punishment but if we want to get back to where we want to be we have to follow orders. We can't freelance.

Mulder: You saw that news report. What did you make of that?

Scully: I think that the obvious assumption is that the woman was shot, regardless of what the police say. Maybe it was a sniper.

Mulder: In the words of their Captain she just sort of popped. And what about this guy who supposedly tried to take her hostage, her husband? Looked to me like he was trying to warn the cops before she died. Now, the sun will rise in America tomorrow regardless of whether or not we're at yet another farm investigating yet another enormous pile of doo-doo. We can be in and out in a day. Nobody has to know.

---

Scully: There's no gunpowder residue... No carbon stippling. There seems to be no evidence of an entry wound whatsoever.

Coroner: There is none. It's all exit, but how that could be...?

Scully: I'm finding what look like fragments of petrous bone embedded in the remaining portion of the auditory canal. In fact, I seem to be looking straight through to the osseous labyrinth or what's left of it.

Coroner: It's almost like a little bomb went off in her ear.

Scully: May I?

Coroner: Please.

Scully: There seems to be some kind of tumefaction within the lateral sinus. [Scully examines the body and notices blood welling up from the ear, without warning an explosion of blood bursts onto Scully's scrubs]

---

Scully: [on mobile phone] Mulder. Mulder, it's me. You know how to pick them, I'll tell you that. Look, I have no idea what killed this woman but I have to assume it's communicable.

Mulder: Yeah.

Scully: Another body has been found just outside of Montello — same apparent cause of death — some kind of massive aneurysm or rupture.

Mulder: Uh-huh.

Scully: And Mulder, I've called the CDC. They're on their way but Patrick Crump may be infected. So you need to quarantine his cell and make sure that anybody who's had any close contact with him whatsoever has been quarantined as well, and that means you, Mulder. You're to have no contact with him whatsoever. Mulder?

Mulder: Well, that's going to be a little tough, Scully.

[Patrick Crump is holding Mulder hostage]

---

Patrick Crump: What are you doing?

Mulder: What? What am I doing?

Patrick Crump: What the hell are you doing?

Mulder: I'm composing a sonnet... What does it look like I'm doing? I'm slowing down for a light.

Patrick Crump: [screaming] Go! Go! [Mulder skilfully weaves through the intersection]

Mulder: Crump. Is this what happened to your wife? This same thing? If you stop moving you die? I think I saw this movie.

---

Scully: Well how did Crump know to avoid the roadblock?

Captain Van Gelder: That's the question. I was hoping your Agent Mulder would manage to steer him toward it, but...

Scully: Or maybe Agent Mulder steered him away from it.

Captain Van Gelder: Why would he do that?

Scully: Maybe he knew something that we don't.

---

Assistant Director Kersh: [on phone] How is Southern Idaho? Agent Scully? Southern Idaho? Think carefully.

Scully: Sir, I am not currently in the state of Idaho.

Assistant Director Kersh: No, you're not.

Scully: In the course of prosecuting our assignment in Idaho, Agent Mulder and I came across a situation in Nevada which we both strongly felt needed our immediate attention.

Assistant Director Kersh: I eagerly await your report. In the meantime, agents of our Las Vegas field office will be available to assist you in tracking down Agent Mulder.

Scully: Thank you, sir.

Assistant Director Kersh: Oh, Agent Scully... I think, at this point I want to see him alive even more than you do.

---

Mulder: Crump? Crump, what else can you tell me about what's happening to you?

Patrick Crump: Mr Crump. You call me by my last name, you say mister in front of it.

Mulder: Mister. I got you.

Patrick Crump: Not Crump. Mr Crump.

Mulder: I can think of something else I'd like to call you. I could put mister in front of that, too if you'd like.

Patrick Crump: You know, what kind of name is Mulder, anyway? What is that, like... like, Jewish?

Mulder: Excuse me?

Patrick Crump: Jewish... It is, right?

Mulder: It's Mr Mulder to you, you peanut-picking bastard. Now, Mr Crump what can you tell me about what's happening...?

---

Mulder: What caused it? [Vicky Crump's nose bleed]

Patrick Crump: What am I? Am I... like Quincy? How the hell should I know what caused it? It just happened. Ten, fifteen minutes later, she just... starts getting sick. Said she got a headache that just... keeps getting worse and worse. She starts... screaming. I didn't know what the hell to do. I just, uh... I got her in the truck and... taking her to the hospital. But then it seemed like the faster we went the better she'd do, but just as soon as I'd try to slow down or stop...

Mulder: I'm sorry about your wife.

Patrick Crump: Sure you are... You and the rest of your Jew FBI.

Mulder: Crump...

Patrick Crump: Oh, yeah. You think I don't know, huh? You think I'm just some ignorant pudknocker, don't you? But I get it, man! I see what this is! I am not sick and I do not have the flu. Vicky and me were just some kind of... Government guinea pigs.

Mulder: You think the government did this to you?

Patrick Crump: Hell, yeah. Who else? You see it all the time on the TV: they're dropping Agent Orange, they're putting radiation in little retarded kids' gonads... Oh, yeah. You sons of bitches sneaking around my woods at night — I seen you. You think I don't know?

Mulder: Well, on behalf of the international Jewish conspiracy I just need to inform you that we're... almost out of gas.

---

Captain Van Gelder: [on mobile phone] It's Van Gelder. Agent, I don't know what the hell your partner's thinking but not only is he actively evading my officers, now he's stolen a car. [The phone is picking up interference]

Scully: Come again?

Captain Van Gelder: You heard right. He left behind a crazy note addressed to you. You there?

Scully: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Read it to me.

Captain Van Gelder: Crump sick; will die if stopped same as wife. Must head west to keep alive. No roadblocks! Exclamation point. This make any sense to you?

Scully: Take him at his word. Let him through.

Captain Van Gelder: Let him through? Look, uh... No offence, Agent Scully but how 'bout you run that by your superiors 'cause frankly, I think they'll say different.

Scully: I'll take that under advisement. [Captain Van Gelder's reply is lost in static as Scully stands over a Department of Defence antenna array]

---

Patrick Crump: Faster.

Mulder: I'm doing 70.

Patrick Crump: You got to go faster. It's getting worse.

Mulder: Okay. [Mulder accelerates to 80]

Patrick Crump: Yeah, yeah. That's good. Okay. Hey, uh... The Jew stuff? No offence. I mean, uh... a man can't help who he's born to.

Mulder: That was an apology, right? Gee, I don't know if I can see to drive my eyes are tearing up so bad.

Patrick Crump: Whatever, man. Why you doing this?

Mulder: Why am I doing what?

Patrick Crump: This.

Mulder: It's not in your best interest to make me question that right now.

Patrick Crump: How do I know you ain't doing exactly what they want you to? Hmm? Driving me all around creation, experimenting on me... How do I know it ain't that?

Mulder: I guess you don't.

Patrick Crump: I ain't saying you are. I'm just saying... That's no way to treat a man take away his dignity like that. It ain't right. Better just to kill him. That's all I'm saying.

Mulder: Hey, you got to stay alive if you want to stick it to the government. If you die, you let them off the hook. Am I right? Huh?

Patrick Crump: You're right. You're damn straight.

Mulder: We'll figure this out.

Patrick Crump: You'd better figure quick. We're running out of west. [They have just crossed the state line into California]

---

Scully: Lieutenant Breil? My name is Dana Scully. I called in regard to the electrical equipment the Navy is maintaining in the town of Montello.

Lieutenant Breil: Right. I don't know if there's been some miscommunication between you and your Washington office, but, uh...

Scully: My Washington office?

Lieutenant Breil: Yeah. I was under the impression that I'd explained this to the FCC's satisfaction.

Scully: Oh, I'm... I'm so sorry to make you run through it again, uh... For my official report to the, uh... to the FCC.

Lieutenant Breil: Okay. At 6:17 yesterday morning during a test of our ground conduction radio system a situation arose in which our equipment experienced a brief power surge. That's what interrupted television reception in the four-state area. However, steps have already been taken to insure this won't happen again.

Scully: The ground conduction radio — that would be Project Seafarer?

Lieutenant Breil: The specifics of what we do here are classified, ma'am.

Scully: Sure, sure. Um... Would you happen to know what effect such a surge might have on, uh... on an organism... Say, a... say, a human being? Theoretically speaking.

Lieutenant Breil: Theoretically speaking? That's classified as well, ma'am.

---

Scully: [on mobile phone] Mulder, are you okay?

Mulder: Yeah, aside from terminal cell phone withdrawal... That, and I got to pee. Where are you?

Scully: I'm just about to board a Justice Department jet. Hopefully, I'll overshoot you.

Mulder: Headed where?

Scully: I don't know, Mulder. You tell me.

Mulder: I'm guessing wherever the hell route 36 ends, but we can't stop, Scully. And I'm kind of at a loss as to what to do next.

Scully: Well, I think I have a loose theory as to what caused this.

Mulder: Well, lay it on me.

Scully: Okay. Mulder, you know what ELF waves are? Extremely Low Frequency radio transmissions?

Mulder: Yeah, use an antenna, like, 50 miles long. And the military use it communicate with the Trident submarines; Project Seafarer, Project Haarp.

Scully: Well Seafarer has an antenna array stretching beneath the edge of Patrick Crump's property. Now, ELF fields have been shown to... to produce biological effects on human tissue; inducing electrical currents, altering chemical reactions.

Mulder: Not to mention that as a potential weapons application its been referred to as electrical nerve gas or may be behind the so-called Taos Hum.

Scully: What if some overload, some hum, from this system could somehow match the resonant frequency of the human skull? I mean, what if it could induce a like hum that could... the could somehow exert a rising pressure on the labyrinth of the inner ear, in a sense shattering it?

Mulder: But with constant movement somehow ameliorating that pressure making it bearable. But why only westward movement?

Scully: I don't know, Mulder, I don't know. I mean... I mean, maybe it has to follow certain lines of force; electrical or magnetic.

Mulder: But the big question, Scully, is what do we do about it?

Scully: Well, I think I know, Mulder, but it's nothing that Mr Crump is going to like. [Mulder listens as Scully explains]

Mulder: We'll be there. [He hangs up]

Patrick Crump: What?

Mulder: Well, whether they did this to you intentionally or not, you were right. They did it to you.

Patrick Crump: So, what do we... what do we do?

Mulder: Your one chance is that we meet my partner at the end of the highway. There, she will insert a long, large-bore needle into your inner ear hopefully relieving the pressure. Now, when we get there she's going to have to work fast. She's only going to have one chance. She's not going to be able to use any anaesthetic and it will probably leave you deaf.

Patrick Crump: But I'll live, right? [Mulder nods] Well, that's what it's all about. All right, man. Let's do it. Mr Mulder, could you go a little faster, please? Just a little more is all I need.

Mulder: Sure.

---

Assistant Director Kersh: Justice Department jet; 2.6 turbine hours round trip at $1,400 an hour. Car rental; over-mileage, out-of-state use penalties, $346. Compensation to one Walter R Duncan for unauthorised use of his 1968 Caprice station wagon; $500.

Mulder: Why don't you bill me.

Assistant Director Kersh: I'll bill your partner instead. You too obviously relish the role of martyr.

Mulder: Okay. So are we done here? Back to the bozo work investigating huge piles of manure?

Assistant Director Kersh: You can always quit. [Mulder leaves]

Scully: Sir, Agent Mulder has been through a lot.

Assistant Director Kersh: And you apologise for him a lot. I've noticed that about you.

Scully: I'm not apologising for this. Because of his work, the DoD is shutting down their antenna array in north eastern Nevada. Our participation in this case has saved lives.

Assistant Director Kersh: I don't see you proving that. The Department of Defence admits no culpability whatsoever. Furthermore, they say the closing of the facility was coincidental.

Scully: Right.

Assistant Director Kersh: Don't misunderstand me, Agent. I don't care if you and your partner saved a school bus full of doe-eyed urchins on their way to Sunday bible camp. You no longer investigate X-Files. You are done and the sooner you and Mulder come to recognise that, the better for both of you. [Scully leaves]

Scully: [muttering] Big piles of manure.