Look, Ben, this is what infuriates me. Don't you see? It's so painfully obvious.
Why do you think our stock's in the toilet?
Because you're cutting research in half.
You've forgotten what the adventure's about.
The industry's changing. We need to make some hard choices.
- Save your sound bite for the press! - Let's not relive the stockholders' meeting.
You're killing me! You're killing my company!
Eurisko is not your company, Brad. Not any more.
And you damn well better grow up and get used to it!
You're gonna regret this.
New paragraph.
As I 'm sure everyone on the board will agree,...
..Eurisko has to face head-on the realities of an increasingly competitive world.
Since the unfortunate departure of Brad Wilczek,...
..I have made recommendations that I believe
will reposition Eurisko as an industiy leader.
At the top of this list is the immediate termination of the COS project.
Its disastrous performance over the past three quarters
and projected losses well into 1994...
..leave us no other choice.
Hm.
Ah...
Hello? Hello!
At the tone, Eastern Standard Time...
..will be 7.35 p.m.
What the hell...?
Damn.
Argh!
File deleted.
Mulder.
Jerry?
You're Dana Scully, right? Jerry Lamana.
- We worked together in Violent Crimes. - "Worked together"! We were partners.
That's $8.50, please.
- Jerry, what are you doing here? - Looking for you. And I'm buying you lunch.
- No, really. - Look, it's on me.
Here.
- Cause of death was electrocution. - And it wasn't accidental?
Looks like some kind of elaborate booby trap, but we don't know a whole lot more.
Engineerjust found him 12 hours ago.
- Who's running the investigation? - Either of you know Nancy Spiller?
The forensics instructor at the Academy!
- We used to call her the Iron Maiden. - On a good day!
Anyway, she's putting together the squad and...
..I took the liberty of mentioning your name.
Look, Jerry, I'd like to help you out, but we're not on general assignment.
Because of the X-Files?
Look, the truth is I could use a little help on this. I don't wanna drop the ball on this one.
You won't drop the ball.
Drake wasn't just the CEO of a Fortune 500 company.
He was a good friend of the Attorney General's.
Another feather in my cap would be nice cos the one I got is looking mangy.
- Yeah, but, Jerry... - Look,...
..I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important.
- How come you went your separate ways? - I'm a pain in the ass to work with.
- Seriously, Mulder. - I'm not a pain in the ass?
We had different career goals.
Jerry wanted the fifth floor.
- And you? - I was gunning for a basement office...
..with no heat or windows.
Well, I know where you ended up. What about Jerry?
He ran into a little bad luck in Atlanta working Hate Crimes.
- What kind of bad luck? - He misplaced a piece of evidence.
Sent it to the cleaners.
By the time he got it back, a federal judge had lost both hands and an eye.
- 29? - Uh-huh.
- Going up. - Must be for the visually impaired.
How about that? A politically correct elevator.
Third floor.
Fourth floor.
- You OK? - Yeah.
What was that?
- Yes? - Hello?
- Security. Who's this? - This is Agent Dana Scully.
- Do you have a problem? - Fifth floor. Sixth floor.
Uh, actually, I think everything's OK.
Ninth floor. Tenth floor. Eleventh floor.
See here? Someone has tampered with the servo.
They switched the ground to the negative,...
- ..so when he put the key in the lock... - He completed the circuit.
lt's fused. It takes a lot ofjuice to melt a steel key.
And to throw a 180-pound man ten feet.
The servo switch - could it have been moved manually?
We didn't find any prints in the surrounding area.
Sure. It could have been switched manually, but whoever did it had to override the COS.
- What's the COS? - The Central Operating System.
It runs the building.
It regulates everything from energy output to the volume of water in each toilet flush.
This is Claude Peterson, a building systems engineer. He found the body.
If you wanted to override the COS, what would they...?
First you'd have to break the access code, which... well, let's say it wouldn't be easy.
We'll need a list of the people with that know-how.
I can tell you right now, it'll be a short list.
- Would you be on it? - Me?!
Hey, look, I'm just a glorified building super.
All I do is monitor the system, make sure it's functioning properly,...
..like when I saw the overload in Mr Drake's office.
What about the phone lines? Does the COS monitor all calls?
- Yes, it does. Why? - I'm just wondering.
OK. Look, can I go now?
Why'd you ask him about the phones?
Phone's off the hook.
Maybe Drake was talking to somebody
right before he did his Ben Franklin impersonation.
Taught him everything he knows.
Come in.
lt's past three.
I'm just looking for my profile notes.
Maybe if you cleaned your desk more than once a year.
They were right here. I'm telling you.
We're late.
There are a couple of elements for us to consider.
Both the statistical rarity of homicidal electrocution...
..and the complexity of the crime indicate a certain devious premeditation.
After all, there are much simpler ways of killing someone.
All of which leads me to believe that our guy was some kind of
sociopathic game player,...
..maybe even a recluse,...
..since he designed a trap, not only to avoid detection,...
..but to avoid contact with the victim.
Is that your profile?
Forget it. No.
Drake's final phone call supports this theory.
At the tone, Eastern Standard Time will be 7.35 p.m.
Drake's estimated time of death.
Why would Drake call for the correct time just before he died?
It was an incoming call...
..from somewhere in the Eurisko building itself.
Whoever set the trap wanted to make sure that Drake took the bait.
- Excellent work, Agent Lamana. - Thank you.
Jerry, what the hell are you doing?
- Hey, don't get all bent out of shape. - That was my profile.
Look, I didn't think you'd mind.
Anyway, they were just notes. I filled in the blanks.
Jerry, you went into my office and you stole my work.
Look, you're on this case cos I asked you to help me out, and you helped me out.
What is the big deal?
- What did he say? - He apologised... in his own way.
ljust got off the phone with Peterson, the systems engineer.
One name! Brad Wilczek?
He said it would be a short list.
And it's headline news how much he despised Drake.
Thatjust seems too obvious. To kill Drake would be so brazenly egomaniacal.
And fully consistent with Jerry's excellent behavioural profile.
Fully.
This is what a 220 IQ and a $400-million severance settlement buys you.
Yes?
Brad Wilczek? We're with the FBI.
What took you guys so long?
Would you mind taking off your shoes?
You can divide the computer science industry into two types of people:
neat and scruffy.
- Benjamin Drake fit into the first category? - Neat people like things neat.
They wear nicely pressed suits and work on surface phenomena.
Things they can understand: market shares and third-quarter profits.
And you had a different vision for the company?
I started Eurisko out of my parents' garage. I was 22 years old.
I'd just spent a year following around The Grateful Dead.
- You know what Eurisko means? - Mm-mm.
That's from the Greek, isn't it?
Um,... "I learn things".
Not exactly. It means "I discover things".
But Ben Drake wasn't interested in discovery.
He was a short-sighted, power-hungry opportunist.
Let me show you something. Smart home.
From this prototype I have access to every square foot of my house.
This place is as safe as Fort Knox and as energy efficient as your average igloo.
We were two years ahead of Microsoft...
..when Drake, in his infinite wisdom, killed the programme.
Is this system related to the one in your corporate building?
Variation on a theme.
How many people know the system well enough to override it?
Finally the bonus question. Not many is the answer.
Could someone have hacked into the system?
Not your average phone freak, that's for sure.
But there's plenty of kooks out there.
Data travellers, electro wizards, techno anarchists.
Anything's possible.
- Could you have done it? - Of course. I designed the system.
That's why you guys are here, isn't it?
I'm your logical suspect.
You don't seem too worried.
It's a puzzle, Ms Scully.
And scruffy minds like me like puzzles.
We enjoy walking down unpredictable avenues of thought, turning new comers.
But as a general rule scruffy minds don't commit murder.
Some see genius as the ability to connect the unconnected.
To make juxtapositions. To see relationships where others cannot.
ls Brad Wilczek a genius?
I don 't know.
But I do know this for certain.
He has a predilection for elaborate game playing...
..and knowledge of the Eurisko building.
And he has a demonstrable motive for killing Benjamin Drake.
The question remains.
But if he's so clever, how do we nail him?
End of field journal, October 24th 1993.
File opened.
From the outset, I knew Eurisko would expand effectively,...
..not by traditional Western structures, but by employing certain Zen beliefs...
..and other Eastern philosophies.
..Eastern philosophies...
..Eastern...
Would you give me a second?
Look, I'm here with my hat in my hand.
I screwed up. I'm sorry. What more can I say?
All you had to do was ask. I would have helped you with the profile.
- You don't know what it's like. - What what's like?
You heard about Atlanta?
They got me on six months' probation.
I gotta file daily reports like some cherry-new agent.
That was bad luck. Could have happened to anybody.
Not to you.
Don't run yourself down. You're a good agent.
- We did some good work together. - Let's face it, I was tagging along.
- That's not how it was. - How would you know?
You were too busy dazzling them up there on the high wire.
Mulder.
Take a look.
We borrowed this from the voice biometrics lab at Georgetown.
It's a computer spectrogram capable of identifying individual speech patterns.
This is the recording the COS made of the phone call Drake received
just before he died.
At the tone, Eastern Standard Time will be 7.35 p.m.
This we put together from a series of lectures
Wilczek gave at the Smithsonian last year.
At the tone, Eastern Standard Time will be 7.35 p.m.
Now we'll stack them.
At the tone, Eastern Standard Time will be 7.35 p.m.
- You saying this is the same person? - I'm saying both voices are Brad Wilczek's.
He may have disguised his voice,
but not the formants unique to his own speech patterns.
Which means that he was the one that killed Drake.
He had the motive and the means.
And now we have the physical evidence.
Judge Benson lives in Washington Heights. I can get a warrant in less than an hour.
Someone must make sure Wilczek stays put.
- I'll go with you. - No, I'm gonna bring him in alone.
I need this one, Mulder.
All right.
Come on, come on. Let me in.
Damn!
Mr Wilczek!
Going up.
Second floor. Third floor. Fourth...
- Can I help you? - FBI.
Welcome back, Brad.
You're not equipped with a voice synthesizer.
What is my user level?
That is now at the discretion of the operating system.
Going up.
Second floor. Third floor. Fourth floor.
Fifth floor. Sixth floor. Seventh floor. Eighth floor. Ninth floor.
Tenth floor. Eleventh floor. Twelfth floor. Fourteenth floor.
Fifteenth floor. Sixteenth floor.
What the hell...?
What are you doing?
Sony. Those commands are not available at your current user level.
Try again.
Twenty-third floor. Twenty-fourth floor.
- What are you doing?! - What are you doing?
Twenty-eighth floor. Twenty-ninth floor.
Thirtieth floor.
Twenty-ninth. Thirtieth. Twenty-ninth. Thirtieth...
Oh, man!
Going down.
No! Don't do this!
Oh, my God.
Program executed.
I heard about Jerry.
I'm sorry.
I don't think Wilczek did it.
What?
It doesn't make sense.
Why would he go back to Eurisko?
To destroy evidence. To cover his tracks.
If you were gonna destroy evidence, would you pose for the cameras?
Mulder.
You've been through a lot.
More than I think even you realise.
I think Wilczek is smarter than this.
He just signed a confession.
How much proof do you need?
This is a crime scene. You'll have to leave.
Yeah, I know. I ordered the subpoena.
- That subpoena's been obviated. - What are you talking about?
Unless you've got a Code 5 clearance, I'm gonna have to ask you to turn back.
- Thanks for coming. - I'm here against my betterjudgement.
In the future I must insist that you respect the terms of our arrangement.
Why is Wilczek under a Code 5 investigation?
Why do the Defence Department want him?
Why do you think they want the most innovative programmer in this hemisphere?
- Software? - Yeah.
For years Wilczek has thumbed his nose at any contract
involving weapons applications.
He's a bleeding heart.
What kind of software?
How much do you know about artificial intelligence?
I thought it was only theoretical.
It was... until two years ago.
Remember Helsinki?
The first time a chess-playing computer beat a grandmaster?
That was Wilczek's program.
And the rumour was that he did it by developing the first adaptive network.
An adaptive network?
It's a learning machine.
A computer that actually thinks.
And it's, uh, become something of a holy grail...
..for some of our more inquisitive colleagues in the Department of Defence.
They make me wear shoes all the time. What else do you want from me?
Why are you willing to spend the rest of your life in prison
for a crime you didn't commit?
- What are you talking about? I'm guilty! - I know you're innocent!
You're protecting the machine. The Central Operating System at Eurisko.
If I'm protecting anything, it's not the machine.
Then what?
After the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,...
..Robert Oppenheimer spent the rest of his life regretting
he'd ever glimpsed an atom.
Oppenheimer may have regretted his actions,
but he never denied responsibility for them.
He loved the work, Mr Mulder.
His mistake was in sharing it with an immoral government.
I won't make the same mistake.
But your machine killed Drake.
And it killed my friend.
I'm sorry about what happened,...
..but there's nothing I can do.
And you talk about morality!
You're afraid of the government, but you'll accept the risk your machine will kill again!
Lesser of two evils.
What about a third option?
You created that machine.
Now you tell me how to destroy it.
Wilczek can create a virus to destroy the system.
Mulder, don't you see? Blaming the machine is an alibi, and a bad one.
It's the only thing that makes sense.
The COS project was posting big losses for Eurisko.
Drake was about to end the programme.
So the machine killed Drake out of self-defence?
Self-preservation - the primary instinct of all sentient beings.
Mulder, that level of artificial intelligence is decades away from being realised.
Then why was our government trying to usurp Wilczek's research?
I think you're looking for something that isn't there.
And I think it has something to do with Jerry.
Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea if you talked to someone.
You're probably right.
- Where are you going? - To talk to someone.
How much time do you need?
Hello?
Oh, my God.
This is Special Agent Dana Scully, ID number 2317-616.
I need you to run a quick trace on a number for me. Yeah.
202-555-6431.
Yeah, that's my number. Somebody's accessing my computer.
- Mulder! - Scully, what are you doing here?
Someone or something's been scanning my computer files, tapping my phones.
I traced the line. It came from somewhere in there.
It's the machine.
How can we get in?
Remember the Trojan Horse?
Open sesame.
Oh, what the...
Mulder!
So much for the element of surprise!
What do you say we take the stairs?
28 down, one to go.
Oh, great.
Mulder?
Trick or treat?
No!
- What are you doing? - Don't wanna make the mistake Drake did.
Who you lookin' at?
There should be a way for you to drop down and open the door.
Come on, Scully.
Scully?
Agent Mulder. What are you doing here?
Ah...
Argh!
Ah... Ah!
Ah! Argh!
Aaargh!
Uh!
The machine's been acting all crazy. Power surges, shut-offs.
That's why I'm here so late.
- Where's the B-port? - Oh, it's right back here.
Are you sure you know what you're doing? Because if you don't, it's myjob on the line.
Damn.
System access granted.
User code: level 7.
Now I can put in the virus.
Not bad, Agent Mulder.
You know, I've been trying to access the CPU for the past two years.
Now, please, take out your gun and remove the clip.
Careful.
Defence Department?
Let's say our paychecks are signed by the same person.
Now give me the diskette and step away from there.
You don't want to test my resolve, Agent Mulder.
Put down the gun.
- You don't know what you're dealing with. - Shut up and drop the gun!
You're making a mistake, Agent Scully.
Compromising your sworn duty.
This operation is more sensitive than you can possibly imagine.
- Don't listen to him. - The technology in this machine...
..is of enormous scientific interest.
It's a monster. lt's killed two people.
They can't handle it any better than Wilczek.
Make no mistake.
You will be held accountable.
Mulder, put in the disk.
What are you doing, Brad?
Don 't do this, Brad.
Bad command or file name. Sector 7 not found home.
Brad...
Brad,... why?
I checked with the Department of Corrections subcommittee.
- I even petitioned the Attorney General. - You won't find him.
They can't take a man like Brad Wilczek without an explanation.
They can do anything they want.
Where is he?
In the middle of what we in the trade call "hard bargaining".
Wilczek won't deal. He'll never work for them.
Loss of freedom does funny things to a man, and Wilczek confessed to two murders.
And you effectively destroyed the only evidence that could have exonerated him.
What else could I have done?
Nothing, unless you were willing to let the technology survive.
The Department of Defence still hasn't found anything?
They've been on it for five days. Wilczek's virus was thorough.
It left no trace of the artificial intelligence.
The machine is dead.
We pushed the pulse code modulations to the limit.
Nothing.
We've combed the parsing subroutine.
Yes, sir. Twice.
No, sir. Still nothing, but I'd like to request...
Yes, sir.
No, I understand.
Yes, sir.
Six more hours before we have to consign
the whole damn thing to the metal shredder.
We'll do what we can, sir.
I'm gonna figure this thing out if it kills me.
I made this!