Fight the Future (1998)

April 23rd 2001

WASHINGTON, DC 

6:44 PM

Early evening, but it is already dark. 

Behind the fence surrounding the White House, tourists are taking pictures. 

A mild-mannered looking MAN, mid-thirties, walks past them. He is watching the grounds intently. 

He is HOWARD SALT. He sees his opportunity. Nervously, he slips on a pair of black leather gloves and climbs over the fence. The TOURISTS watch as he begins running across the lawn to the White House. He is only a few yards from the front door when SECRET SERVICE GUARDS spot him. They surround him, guns in hand. HOWARD SALT puts his hands up, but still keeps trying to get to the front door as he pleads with the GUARDS.)

SECRET SERVICE GUARDS: 

Freeze. Freeze! 

Put your hands in the air! 

Freeze! Put your hands...

HOWARD SALT: 

I need to tell The President something. Need to tell... 

I need to tell the President something.

LEAD GUARD: 

Get down on the ground.

(Mass confusion. The GUARDS wrestle HOWARD SALT to the ground.)

HOWARD SALT: 

I need to see the President. 

He needs to know. 

Look, He needs to know. 

Aliens... aliens-- 

They're taking over the United States. 

He needs to know.

(The LEAD GUARD lowers his weapon, listening. In the struggle, HOWARD SALT's jacket has opened. There is a pistol inside.)

GUARD: 

He's got a weapon.

(HOWARD SALT removes the gun, muzzle down. It looks like he might be giving it up, but a GUARD grabs his wrist and the gun accidentally fires into HOWARD's stomach.)

GUARD: 

Get the weapon! Get the weapon!

LEAD GUARD: 

He's shot. 

He shot himself.

(HOWARD SALT moans in pain. The LEAD GUARD kneels next to him, concerned.)

LEAD GUARD: 

He's shot. He's been shot. 

Damn it. Stupid son of a bitch. 

What was he thinking?

ANOTHER GUARD: (off screen) 

Someone get a medic!

GUARD: (off screen) 

Get a medic!

(HOWARD SALT looks up at the LEAD GUARD and begs.)

HOWARD SALT: 

Please, the President... he needs to see this. 

Get this to him.

(HOWARD SALT hands the LEAD GUARD a homemade CD with the words "Fight the Future" handwritten on it. The LEAD GUARD stares at it.)

Scully: Mulder, when a terrorist bomb threat is called in, The Rational Purpose of providing that information is to allow us to Find The Bomb. 

The Rational Object of Terrorism is to promote Terror. 

If you'd study the statistics, you'd find the model behavioral pattern for virtually every case where a threat has turned up an explosive device; and if we don't act in accordance with that data, if you ignore it as we have done, the chances are great that if there actually is a bomb, we might not find it. Lives could be lost .... Mulder. Mulder?

Mulder: (he appears behind her) Boom.

Scully: (startled) Jesus, Mulder!

Mulder: Whatever happened to playing a hunch, Scully? The element of surprise, random acts of unpredictability? If we fail to anticipate the unforeseen or expect the unexpected in a universe of infinite possibilities, we may find ourselves at the mercy of anyone or anything that cannot be programmed, categorized or easily referenced. (eats a sunflower seed)What are we doing up here, Scully? It's hotter than hell.

Scully: I know you're bored in this assignment, Mulder, but unconventional thinking is only gonna get you in trouble now.

*********

MULDER: You've got something to tell me, you've got as much time as it takes for me to hail a cab.

(Mulder and Kurtzweil are outside now, Mulder is raising his hand to hail a cab.)

KURTZWEIL: There's something you don't know about the bombing in Dallas.

MULDER: What's that?

KURTZWEIL: SAC Darius Michaud never tired, or intended, to defuse that bomb.

MULDER: (skeptical voice) He just let it explode in his face, huh?

KURTZWEIL: What's the question no one's asking? (Mulder puts up his arm to hail a cab.) Why that building? Why not The Federal Building?

MULDER: The federal building was too well guarded.

KURTZWEIL: No. They put the bomb in the building across the street because it did have Federal Offices. The Federal Emergency Management Agency had a provisional medical quarantine office there, which is where the bodies where found. But that's the thing ... the thing you didn't know. The thing you'd never think to check. (pause) Those people were already dead. (Mulder looks at him.)

MULDER: Before the bomb went off?

KURTZWEIL: That's what I'm saying.

MULDER: Darius Michaud was a twenty-two-year veteran of the Bureau.

KURTZWEIL: Michaud was a patriot. The people he was loyal to know their way around Dallas. They blew that building to hide something, maybe even something they couldn't predict.

(A Yellow Cab pulls up)

MULDER: You're telling me they blew up that entire building just to hide the bodies of those firemen.

KURTZWEIL: (nods) And one little boy.

(Mulder pulls out his FBI badge and shows it to him.)

DETECTIVE: (over his shoulder to another detective) The feds are looking for him too. (to Mulder) Real nice business he's got, huh?

(Mulder is looking through a bookshelf.)

MULDER: What’s that?

DETECTIVE: Selling naked pictures of little kids on his computer. (Mulder stops and looks at him, obviously surprised by this development. He looks down at two books in his hand.) You looking for him for some other reason?

(The first book in Mulder's hand is called, "The Four Horsemen Of The Global Domination Conspiracy", the other, “Countdown to the Apocalypse”, both written by Kurtzweil.)

MULDER: Yeah .. (pause) I had an appointment for a pelvic examination. (He looks up at the detective, gives him a goofy grin and the detective laughs.)

DETECTIVE: You want a call if we turn up this Kurtzweil?

MULDER: (gives the detective a tap on the arm.) No, don't bother.

Ritter, 49, of Delmar, N.Y., masturbated on a Web camera and engaged in a sexually graphic online chat with an undercover Barrett Township police officer posing as a 15-year-old girl in 2009.

The Webcam video proved to be an important piece of evidence that led the jury to its verdict.

“The graphic 30-minute video of Ritter and the defendant's own words, when you matched them up, it was obvious,” said juror Richard Hurley of East Stroudsburg.

The jury at one point during deliberation had to ask for clarification on a few issues to help them reach a proper verdict.

“We went through all the charges and asked for clarification on a few of the issues. It just seemed logical even though the defense attorney did a beautiful job. The evidence was so obvious," Hurley said.

Juror Joe McFaulds of Effort said this was a “very hard” case to listen to and deliberate.

“The man needs help and I hope he gets it,” McFaulds said. “I feel bad for his wife and children.”

(Mulder leaves the apartment, then exits the building. He stands outside looking around, sees Kurtzweil standing at the entrance to the alley. He motions to Mulder to come closer. Mulder enters the alley.)

KURTZWEIL: See this crap? Someone knows I'm talking to you.

MULDER: (sarcastically): Not according to the men in blue.

KURTZWEIL: Well, what is it this time? Kiddy porn again? Sexual battery of a patient?

MULDER: They want to discredit you, for what?

KURTZWEIL: Because I'm a dangerous man. Because I know too much about the truth.

MULDER: Oh, that end-of-the-world apocalyptic garbage you write?

KURTZWEIL: You know my work? (he smiles hopefully, but Mulder gives him a slight snort and smile, then turns and starts to walk away.) I was right about Dallas, wasn't I?

MULDER: (he stops and turns around.) How? How were you right?

KURTZWEIL: Are you familiar with the Hanta virus, Agent Mulder?

MULDER: Yeah, it was a deadly virus spread by field mice in the southwestern United States several years ago.

KURTZWEIL: According to the newspaper, FEMA was called out to manage an outbreak of the Hanta virus. Are you familiar with what the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s real power is? FEMA allows the White House to suspend constitutional government upon declaration of a national emergency. Think about that! What is an agency with such broad-sweeping power doing managing a small viral outbreak in suburban Texas?

MULDER: You're saying it wasn't such a small outbreak.

KURTZWEIL: No, I'm saying it wasn't the Hanta virus.

MULDER: Well, what was it?

(Another police car pulls up to the front of the building. Mulder and Kurtzweil walk farther into the alleyway.)

MULDER: What was it?

KURTZWEIL: When we were young men in the military, your father and I were recruited for a project. They told us it was biological warfare, a virus.

MULDER: What killed those men?

KURTZWEIL: What killed them I won't even write about! We have no context for what killed those men, or any appreciation of the scale at which it will be unleashed in the future.

MULDER: A plague?

KURTZWEIL: The plague to end all plagues, Agent Mulder. A silent weapon for a quiet war. The systematic release of an indiscriminate organism for which the men who will bring it on still have no cure! They've been working on this for fifty years! While the rest of the world have been fighting gooks and commies, these men have been secretly negotiating a planned Armageddon!

MULDER: Negotiating with whom?

KURTZWEIL: I think you know. The timetable has been set. It will happen on a holiday, when people are away from their homes. The president will declare a state of emergency, at which time all government, all federal agencies, will come under the power of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA, the secret government.

MULDER: And they call me paranoid.

KURTZWEIL: Go back to Dallas, Agent Mulder, and dig. Or we're gonna find out along with the rest of the country, when it's too late.

MULDER: What is it?

(As WMM speaks, Mulder opens the pouch and pulls out a small bottle of green liquid and a piece of paper with this written on it):

South 83 Deg Lat East 63 Deg Long

WMM: A weak vaccine against the virus Agent Scully has been infected with. It must be administered within 96 hours. That leaves you little time to reach those coordinates.

MULDER: You're lying.

WMM: No. Though I have no means to prove otherwise. The virus is extra-terrestrial. We know very little about it except that it was the original inhabitant of this planet.

MULDER: (unbelieving) A virus...

WMM: What is a virus, but a colonizing force that cannot be defeated? Living in a cave, underground, until it mutates ... and attacks.

MULDER: This is what you've been conspiring to conceal? A disease?

WMM: No. For God's sake, you've got it all backwards! AIDS, the Ebola virus, on an evolutionary scale they are newborns. This virus walked the planet long before the dinosaurs.

MULDER: (smiling in disbelief) What do you mean walked?

WMM: Your aliens, Agent Mulder. Your little green men arrived here millions of years ago. Those that didn't leave have been lying dormant underground since the last ice age in the form of an evolved pathogen, waiting to be reconstituted by the alien race when it comes to colonize the planet -- using us as hosts. Against this we have no defense, nothing but a weak vaccine. Do you see why it was kept secret? Why even the best men, men like your father, could not let the truth be known. Until Dallas we believed the virus would simply control us, that mass infection would make us a slave race. Imagine our surprise when they began to gestate. My group has been working cooperatively with the alien colonists, facilitating programs like the one you saw, to give us access to the virus in the hope that we might be able to secretly develop a cure.

MULDER: To save your own asses.

WMM: Survival is the ultimate ideology. Your father wisely refused to believe this.

MULDER: But he sacrificed my sister. He let them take Samantha.

WMM: Without a vaccination, the only true survivors of the viral holocaust will be those immune to it - human alien clones. He allowed your sister to be abducted, to be taken to a cloning program, for one reason...

MULDER: So she would survive. As a genetic hybrid.

WMM: Your father chose hope over selfishness. Hope in the only future he had, his children. His hope for you was that you would uncover the truth about the project. That you would stop it, that you would fight the future.

(Mulder lets it all sink in. The driver's eyes look at him through the rear-view mirror. Darn good driver if he ain't watching the road!)

MULDER: Why are you telling me this?

WMM: For the sake of my own children. Once it's learned what I have told you, my life will be over.

(WMM looks ahead, possibly at the driver. Mulder looks at the driver.)

MULDER: Where's Dr. Kurtzweil? (no response) I'd like to get out of the car now. (to the driver) Stop the car!

WMM: Driver. (the car pulls to a stop in yet another alleyway.) The men I work with will stop at nothing to clear the way for what they believe is their stake in the inevitable future. I was ordered to kill Dr. Kurtzweil, as I was ordered to kill you.

(Suddenly, WMM grabs a gun (from his lap?) and shoots the driver in the back of the head, BLAMMO! Mulder recoils.)

MULDER: Ow!

WMM: Trust no one, Mr. Mulder.

(WMM opens his own door and exits, holding the door open.)

WMM: Get out of the car.

MULDER: Why? The upholstery is already ruined.

WMM: Get out of the car! (Mulder scoots over to WMM's door and exits the car.) You have precious little time. (Mulder slams the door shut angrily.) What I've given you the alien colonists don't yet know exists. The vaccine you hold is the only defense against the virus. Its introduction into an alien environment may have the power to destroy the delicate plans we have so assiduously protected for the last 50 years!

MULDER: What do you mean, "may" have?

WMM: Find Agent Scully. Only then will you realize the scope and grandeur of the project. Go. Go now!

“’The Method’” as they called it, though it was more so a germ-line procedure of singular meta-scientific complexity had been given to them by the alien colonists as a quid pro quo. The Syndicate would help them [the aliens] to create a population of alien hybrids who would hide in plain site, cloned from human ova and alien bio-material so there would be a clone race immune to the effects of the black oil when the return to the planet began.

For this, the Syndicate would be sequestered - granted a sort of immunity or asylum, given a place in the grander scheme. They were the Vichy government to the German ‘Final Solution’: collaborationists whose motivation was simple, self-directed survival. These cloning operations were spread across the country, the cataloguing and record-keeping done through a complex intra-institutional system that connected to every branch of government, from the Social Security Administration to the Department of Defence.

The operation, under the working title 'Purity Control,' had been launched in 1948, its original conception the brainchild of German scientists given immunity themselves for war crimes, and allowed to continue the eugenic experiments that were Hitler's dark legacy. The Syndicate had begun as a subset of a shadow intelligence agency whose original orders were to create plausible denial and an effective cover-up of Purity Control. But through 50 years, [and] numerous U.S. and UN administrations, the principals began to wrest control, accumulating power and influence across international borders, such that - by 1990 - the operation ceased to have any member accountable to any one government and whose only orders would be taken by a man named Strughold, a German industrialist who had fled his homeland to northern Africa.

These men, whose knowledge and access provided control of a foreseeable future, had, in spite of this, everything to lose; their secret work, the cloning preparations and the cataloguing constituted their greatest vulnerability: exposure. Their detection would ensure not just their own demise, but a far-reaching dissolution of social and religious order around the globe.

To protect against this, the Syndicate employed methods of disinformation, using covert government programs that had been regrettably discovered, as a kind of smokescreen - a dodge or blind where the transgressions of Congress-accountable [sic] agencies served to hide their own more odious undertaking. They had even, at times, used the UFO phenomenon to create an hysteria that science and the intelligentsia denounced so completely as to make belief in believers seem ridiculous, and completely discreditable.

They had also, in a crisis, used a tool of the colonists themselves - alien bounty hunters who policed the cloning operations and enforced rule on the countdown to colonisation. A double-edged sword whose clod-blooded tactics had helped to stem a leak, or threat, but also kept a watch on the Syndicate. A threat in itself, as the Syndicate had something to hide that not even the colonists knew of: a vaccine against the black oil, an inoculant against the substance in which the alien life force was held - in fact, the very medium of the life force itself.

To guard this secret was perhaps even more critical than the truth of the existence of alien life, and of colonisation. If the Syndicate's own secret vaccine were discovered, the vaccine that would make themselves immune from the effects of the black oil, they would certainly be destroyed and the timetable for colonisation stepped up. They would protect this secret with their lives. They would kill to protect it, as it symbolised the only hope they had of avoiding enslavement when the planet was overtaken.

That they had been able to, over decades, conduct their work on the vaccine undetected was the result of a code among the Syndicate members that put honour and the future above personal politics. But now this code was beginning to break down. An incipient scramble for power [was] beginning to develop. A threat from within that doubled the threat from without: from agents Mulder and Scully, and the X-Files.”