Season 11, Episode 2: This

Synopsis

Mulder and Scully are snoozing at Mulder's house when they get a staticky video message from Richard Langly. He says he needs to know if he's dead, because if so "they know that I know." Soon after, a trio of gunmen ambush the agents; they kill two, but one gets away.

The agents report the incident, and Mulder hides the phone. He wonders if Langly might still be alive, since no one saw the Lone Gunmen's bodies after they heroically stopped a bioweapon from being released 16 years ago. A group of Humvees full of heavily armed Russian-speaking guys arrive at the house; Scully calls Skinner, who urges them to surrender.

The Russian ringleader orders Mulder and Scully to be killed after finding the phone, but the agents escape. Skinner finds them and says the guys are private contractors from Purlieu Services, an American security firm based in Moscow; he didn't expect that they would try to murder fellow intelligence agents, but Mulder and Scully are suspicious. The Purlieu Services guys try to hack the phone, but a kill switch shuts it down.

Mulder and Scully visit the Lone Gunmen's graves at Arlington National Cemetery, and some signs on the tombstones seem to point to Deep Throat's final resting place. They find a memory medallion before they are again attacked by the remaining gunman and again escape. Scanning the medallion, Mulder and Scully find a video of an NSA building in New York City called Titanpointe and realize that an old X-File might help shed some light on the mystery.

The agents confront Skinner about working with men who tried to kill them, and Skinner tells them the world has become a much more complex place. He reveals that the X-Files have been digitized and shared with other intelligence agencies, including Purlieu. Mulder and Scully find that all references to Langly have been scrubbed, although a clue in the files tells them to go to a professor, Dr. Hamby, at Semple Technical Academy in Bethesda.

Hamby says she and Langly took a deal from Purlieu several years earlier to be able to continue living beyond death as a computer simulation. She starts to give them some instructions on how to make contact with Langly, but is shot by the gunman who has been pursuing them; the gunman is in turn shot by Scully.

Langly's simulation is able to make contact again and begs them to shut down the simulation, saying its set up as a sort of utopia but that he and the other people there are essentially "digital slaves." Mulder notes how Langly had theorized a tunnel between the FBI field office and Titanpointe. They are able to access it, but Mulder is soon captured by Purlieu contractors.

Mulder is brought before Syndicate member Erika Price, who says most human life is about to be wiped out and the digital simulation is the next step in our evolution. She says the technology exists to upload any mind through a smartphone. Langly is the only one of the uploaded minds working for them who has figured out that he's in a simulation.

Scully finds the simulation hardware and shuts it down. The agents bring back a forensics team to start a case against Price, but the Titanpointe rooms have already been scrubbed. Returning home, Langly sends a desperate message telling them to destroy the backup before a taunting image of the slain gunman appears.

Episode Body Count

Two Purlieu Services guys: Killed during the ambush on Mulder and Scully's home

Dr. Hamby: Shot by the gunman

Gunman: Shot by Scully

Steve Jobs: I've included famous dead folks referenced in these episodes, so I see no reason to stop now. Langly mentions how Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who died in 2011, is one of the people who now exists in the simulation.

Martin Minsky: The co-founder of MIT's artificial intelligence laboratory, Minsky died in 2016. Langly references him as one of the people in the simulation.

Michael Crichton: The bestselling author of such books as Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain died in 2008 and is also hanging out with Langly in the postmortem simulation.

Some other Purlieu Services guys might have been killed in the melee as well, but it's a bit hard to confirm.

Humans: 7
Creatures: 0
Aliens: 0

Cumulative Body Count (202/202 original episodes, 2/2 movies, 8/16 reboot episodes)

Humans: 2,353
Creatures: 132
Aliens: 66

Grand Total: 2,551