episode by Chris Ruppenthal
summary by Pellinor
Internal dating: The case starts on April 25th 1994.
Mahan Propulsion Laboratory, Washington Institute of Technology. Three scientists are conducting tests in a wind tunnel, arguing between themselves about how far to go. One of them, Surnow, wants to go slow to ensure success, but the others want to push on to get quick resultsand finanical reward. Surnow stays behind to do some calculations, but gets trapped in the wind tunnel and killed. Roland, a mentally-handicapped janitor, ignoring his screams, completes the calculations on the board then carries on sweeping the floor.
Mulder and Scully arrive at the scene (Scully has just been to a wedding, and Mulder asks her if she caught the bouquet. "Maybe," she smiles.) Mulder says the scientists were working on the secret Icarus project, which tries to create jet engines that will go twice as fast on half the fuel. Surnow is the second scientist to die, he tells her. Scully warily asks him if he thinks they're working on UFO technology. "There's something unexplainable here," he replies, "but it's certainly not unidentifiable."
They talk to Keats, another of the scientists, who is hostile, saying he's already gone through it all with the police. "What are you driving at?" he challenges, when Scully brings up the other scientists who was killed in a car crash six months earlier. Mulder points to the calculation on the board, pointing out that the handwriting at the end is different from the rest of it.
Heritage Halfway House. Roland makes a card fro his friend Tracy, which he covers with stars. Mulder and Scully comes to talk to him, having found out he was the only person apart from the scientists in the building the previous night. He barely registers their questions, but counts the number of gold stars on Scully's shirt. Then he gets some flashes to someone being held in liquid nitrogen and panics. As Scully is helping him, Mulder picks up a sample of his handwriting.
FBI Regional HQ, Seattle. While a handwriting expert is checking Roland's writing against the hand that completed the calculations, Scully tells Mulder there was no point even asking. Mulder thinks Roland's an autistic savant, good with numbers, but she says numbers are one thing, but complicated calculations in physics are completely different. The expert finds the two hands don't match.
Roland has a nightmare of the head being forced into the liquid nitrogen.
Keats is working late at night when Roland comes in and stuns him, then forces his head in the liquid nitrogen. When he drops him to the floor, his head shatters.
Mulder checks Keats' computer and finds someone worked on it for five hours after Keats' body. The file they worked on was one belonging to Arthur Grable, the scientist who died some months earlier. Mulder guesses the password - using numbers scribbled endlessly by Roland - and they find someone has been continuing Grable's work regularly since his death.
Roland dreams of a young boy waving goodbye as another boy is forced into a car and driven away. When he wakes up, Mulder and Scully are there, waiting to question him. "I'm not supposed to talk to them," he says, but he's persuaded otherwise by the home administrator. Mulder asks him about his job, and he says Dr Grable, who was nice to him, got it for him. Mulder asks when he last spoke to Grable - last week? Last night? "Dr Grable died," Roland says, sadly. "People die. They go away. And they're not supposed to come back."
Scully talks to the administrator, asking to see Roland's file. As she reads it, Mulder theorises that Grable deliberately found Roland to work at the lab, and has been using him. He thinks Grable faked his death. Comparing the two files, they find out Grable and Roland both came from Seattle. Roland was taken into a home aged three and his origins are unknown, whereas Grable came from a rich family. However their birthdays are the same.
Roland's friend Tracy starts talking about dreams, asking him to tell her his and asking who Arthur is. He starts crying, then flashes to a picture of him attacking her. He screams and runs from the room. As he cowers in the bathroom clutching his head, he flashes again and again to the image of him attacking her. "Go away!" he shouts.
Mulder and Scully question Nolette, the last surviving scientist. He tells them an anecdote behind a picture on his wall, saying that Grable was always a practical joker. Mulder asks if he could have faked his death, pointing out that the car accident was on a dry road and there was no funeral. Nolette says there was no way he could still be alive.
Mulder and Scully visit the Avalon Foundation, where Grable's head has been frozen. His body was too badly damaged, but he hoped in the future a cloned body could be found for him. There have recently been some odd temperature fluctuations, they are told, but the man they talk to says it must be mechanical and nothing to do with Grable's brain activity, as Mulder suggests. Looking at Grable's records, they find out he put Roland down as an organ donor. Mulder says he thinks they're twins.
Using a computer, Mulder and Scully get an expert to fiddle around with the picture of Grable, removing the beard and suchlike, and find it looks just like Roland.
Mulder asks Roland about his dreams. Pulling his chair closer, he confides to Roland that he had a dream himself the previous night - "I dreamt I was in a pool, and I could see my father underwater, but when I dove down, the water stung my eyes. And there was another man at the pool, watching me. He upset me. He was asking me questions I didn't want to answer. I had to leave. I couldn't find my father." Roland says he can't tell him about his dreams, and is covered with guilt at pushing Tracy away earlier. Mulder asks if it was his dreams that made him hit Tracy, but Roland doesn't answer. Mulder then gives him a remote controlled toy, which Roland makes run across the floor. Mulder tells Roland he is being controlled by his dreams in the same way as the toy is being controlled by him. "Who's at the controls?" Roland asks, and Mulder shows him a picture of Grable. Roland starts screaming, flashing to a scene of two small boys, happy together before one was taken away. He rushes from the room and manages to escape from the building without anyone seeing where he went.
Mulder tells Scully that he believes in psychic connection, especially between sibling and most between twins. Scully admits that she's sometimes been thinking about calling one of her brothers just as they call her, but can't accept Roland has a psychic connection to a frozen brain. Mulder says no-one knows anything about the state of consciousness Grable is in, and thinks Grable must have found a way to reach out in a way he couldn't do when bound to his body. Scully walks off, saying she must call her brother.
Nolette watches and listens to Mulder and Scully on a closed circuit camera, then goes to the place where Grable is frozen. He presses a few buttons and Grable starts to defrost.
Mulder and Scully find firm evidence that Grable and Roland were twins. They then get a call from the Avalon centre saying that Grable is still deforesting and someone is blocking their attempts to lower the temperature.
Roland works at the wind tunnel, hitting the much sought after Mach 15. As the temperature rises in Grable's canister, Roland clutches his head and seems to be fighting for control. Nolette comes in, expressing himself amazed that Arthur can control Roland's body. "It's my work," Grable / Roland says. Nolette says he can see that the project will be a success, due to the break-through written on the whiteboard, and he'll take the glory. As he's gloating, Roland bops him on the head with a keyboard and shuts him in the wind tunnel.
Mulder and Scully arrive to find Nolette fighting to hang on against the wind. Mulder grabs Roland, shouting "Arthur!", but Scully calls him "Roland." They both ask him to switch off the wind. Roland, flashing to the image of the boys, tries to, but then cries out that he can't remember. Well, he clearly does do for, just as BB lets go, the wind drops.
The court hasn't decided what to do with Roland, but Mulder tells the home administrator that he wasn't acting under his own volition. Even Scully admits that Roland was somehow able to finish his brother's work, though she says they don't know how.
Roland leaves the halfway house, declaring his love for Tracy as he goes. Pausing at the mirror he goes to brush hair that isn't there (Grable had more hair than Roland) and looks long and hard at the mirror.