“Synchrony” is episode nineteen of season four of The X-Files.
The episode opens at night at MIT and an old man is running. He spots a couple of young men arguing over something and heads towards them and says he needs to talk to them. He tells one that a street is dangerous, that he’s travelled a long way. He doesn’t want money; he’s trying to save the life of one of them. The one he’s talking to drops his papers and campus security pulls up. As the security guard starts dealing with the old man, he tells the one who dropped the papers, Lucas Menand, that he’s going to die at 11:46, hit by a bus. He tells the other, Jason Nichols, by name, not to let Lucas cross the street. He won’t see the bus. As the old man is taken away, Jason asks how he knew his name. They go different ways, then Jason sees a bus. He heads towards Lucas, who has dropped his papers again, but is just not in time to stop him stepping in front of the bus. The bus driver accuses Jason of pushing him.
Mulder is telling this to Scully. Lucas Menand is dead and the bus driver claimed that Jason Nichols, associate professor of biology as well as Lucas’s academic advisor, pushed him in front of the bus. Jason refused to tell the police what they were arguing about. Scully asks why they are looking into it. Jason’s alibi is that he was trying to save Lucas, that an old man told them the exact time and place this would happen. No, he didn’t have a long black robe and a scythe when campus security picked him up minutes before the accident. The old man is missing and they can’t talk to the campus security officer, because he’s dead. What of? That’s why they have been called in.
The Boston ME’s office has a disagreement about how to proceed with the autopsy of the security guard. Whether to cut or to saw. Because he’s frozen solid. Scully says it looks like something was inserted into the ear. Yes; a thermometer. The reading was 15 degrees Fahrenheit. The man was found in his patrol car with an empty bottle of gin. It looks like he passed out and froze to death – except the temperature wasn’t remotely that low. Scully takes the temperature again. He’s getting colder. Whilst flash freezing may be weird, Scully doesn’t think it helps the alibi. Mulder is going to ask Jason to explain.
Jason is with his girlfriend at the police station when Mulder arrives. He’s speaking to Mulder against the advice of his attorney because he wants to talk to someone who will listen. He knows the guard is dead and assumes that they will blame that on him as well. Not unless he killed him by flash freezing. Jason admits that Lucas was threatening to go public with Jason falsifying some results. Jason says he hadn’t and the theory is sound. He may have been a little lax, being under pressure to produce results with his NSA grant up for renewal. And Lucas was up for the same grant. Well, there’s motive. The research is on cryobiology. Scully calls Mulder; they may be filing for a second murder charge because Jason’s prints were found inside the campus security car and on the guard’s uniform.
A Dr. Yonechi (Hiro Kanagawa) is at a hotel where they seem to have lost the reservation when the old man greets him. The reservation was made at the wrong hotel; he came to make sure Yonechi had a room. Dr Nichols wasn’t able to come. After Yonechi has been taken to his room, the old man says that Yonechi solved the vitrification problem with the old man’s work. Except he hasn’t. No-one has. The man stabs Yonechi with some sort of medical device and then apologises as Yonechi freezes solid.
Scully is looking at the frozen body when Mulder says that a couple of people saw the old man with Yonechi and are working on a sketch. Scully thinks that Jason has an accomplice who is eliminating their competitors. Scully has found the needle mark on Yonechi and found a similar think on the guard. They also have traces of an unidentifiable compound.
Mulder wants to see Jason’s girlfriend, Lisa Ianelli, next. Scully shows her the compound’s analysis. Lisa explains that it’s kind of a catalyst, for a self-sustaining endothermic reaction. A rapid freezing agent. Jason has been working on it for years. Have they tested it yet? No. It doesn’t exist outside a computer model and the technology to create it is still 5-10 years away. Evidently not. When told about Yonechi, Lisa wants to know how long he’s been frozen. Because they may be able to revive him.
Scully doesn’t think it will work but Mulder says Yonechi’s already dead and has nothing to lose. He’s thawed out and revived, but he quickly starts getting too hot. Way too hot. Then bursts into flames. Lisa thinks removing Yonechi from the tub was a mistake; the compound is unstable.
Mulder thinks that the old man is Jason Nichols, travelled back in time. Quoting a paper of Scully’s in which she wrote about the possibility of time travel. She doesn’t really believe that this is the case. However, Lisa, when she sees the old man, also seems to think he’s Jason. Future Jason seems to be trying to destroy Present Jason’s work.