“Conduit” is episode four of season one of The X-Files.
The episode opens at night beside a lake. A girl and a younger boy are asleep by a campfire and a woman is sleeping in a nearby camper van. The van starts shaking and bright light covers the area before both fade. The boy is shouting for his mother and she reaches for the doorknob, only to burn herself on it. When she opens the door, the boy, Kevin, is outside, and he says that Ruby has gone. The mother calls out for Ruby but there is no answer.
At the FBI, Section Chief Blevins hands Scully Mulder’s latest 302. He’s requesting assignment and travel expenses for them both to Sioux City, Iowa. It’s the first Scully has heard of it; it came through channels. The file Scully has been handed has a clipping from a tabloid about a teen abducted from her tent by aliens. There is apparently no more evidence. Scully admits this is strange, even for Mulder.
Blevins gets another file and suggests it might be connected. The file is an X-File, one instigated by Mulder himself, regarding the disappearance of a Samantha T. Mulder. Blevins asks if Mulder has shared any of the matter with Scully. He has; in “Pilot” Mulder explained how Samantha, his younger sister, disappeared. Blevins wants to know if Mulder’s personal agenda has clouded his professional judgement. No. Blevins says that she can see how it might seem that way and he’s going to disallow the 302. Scully asks to talk to Mulder first before he does.
Scully wants to know why this tabloid story is more credible than the one about the lizard baby. Because the lizard wasn’t born near Lake Okobogee. Known for its trout fishing, and for being a UFO hotspot. In August 1967 there were 4 sightings, including a pilot for the National Weather Service. For scout girls saw it and, although it was claimed to be a weather balloon affected by wind shear, no weather balloon was launched within 700 miles. Mulder wants Scully to read the names of the girls. One of them, Darlene Morris, is Ruby’s mother.
So, they end up heading to Sioux City after all. Darlene never expected the FBI to be the ones who finally listened. She says that Kevin has been acting strange since the incident. No, Darlene tells Scully, her ex wouldn’t be involved. She knows what happened, just as it did before. She’s surprised that Mulder knows about the incident; her name is on record at the Center for UFO Studies. Mulder heads to talk to Kevin who is watching a static-filled television set and writing on a pad. Ones and zeroes; it looks like a binary sequence. There are pages of it. Kevin says that it’s coming from the television
Mulder faxes one of the sheets to someone he knows from the sheriff’s office. The sheriff assumes that Ruby ran away. There was no evidence of anything else and it wouldn’t be the first time. He also dismissed Darlene’s claims, even if he included it in the report. The sheriff thought it was only a matter of time before something happened to Ruby, and if her mother needs crazy stories to get past this, that’s okay, but he isn’t going to follow them up.
Mulder is less than tolerant of the sheriff’s dismissal of the UFO story, to the extent that, outside, Scully tells him not to antagonise local law enforcement, as they might need thei9r help. On their car has been left a handwritten note, saying the writer is across the street and to follow. The writer is a girl who heads into the library. She talks about Ruby and how Ruby was supposed to meet with her boyfriend, Greg, the night she disappeared. Ruby was pregnant, and they were going to leave town.
Greg works in the Pennsylvania Pub and the barman says he called in sick three weeks ago and hasn’t been seen since. Mulder, before he leaves, decides to wind up the man about the tattoo of a flying saucer on the man’s arm. The man suggests that, if Mulder doesn’t believe, he goes to the lake. He also shows them an ear which looks melted off; killer sunburn in the middle of the night.
Scully is disturbed by someone attempting to gain access to her motel room in the morning. Then whoever is outside comes in. The men, who work for the NSA, are looking for Mulder. It’s about the sheet he faxed off; it’s a fragment of a defence satellite transmission. They need to know where it came from. When Scully tells them that it’s from Kevin, the NSA head to seek out an 8-year-old boy as a threat to national security. This involves an over the top ransacking of Kevin’s room and dragging him and his mother away. Then Mulder notices that the top of Darlene’s camper van has been scorched.
Kevin ends up being released, but the 1s and 0s he’s been writing are fragments, not random. Fragments that can be converted into pictures and music and lots more. There wasn’t anything actionable in the material; it’s all fragmentary, Mulder thinks Kevin is a conduit to… something. Darlene isn’t happy.
Some stuff is answered, but some leads to far more questions that are not.