Mulder's head: Mulder's on a beach, watching a father, mother, and son play.

The hospital room: The doctor's voice comes over the scene, explaining to Mrs. Mulder what they know about his condition, and we see her touching his face, talking to him. In his head, he tells her he can hear her. As she leaves the room, he yells after her, but only in his head.

Mulder's head: Then Cigarette Smoking Man (CSM) appears, and communicates with him telepathically for a little while, which was cute. (We know how Mulder can read minds, but how can CSM?) Anyway, CSM sticks a needle in his temple (ow) which brings him back to life. CSM tells Mulder that he has a choice between life or death, but he has to go with CSM to his new life. (In this little speech, trying to convince Mulder that he's really not all that important, CSM tells Mulder that Mulder's not Christ, which is comes into play later.) He tells Mulder he's his father (poor Mulder, always the last to know) and gets Mulder to come with him.

M&S's office: Kritschgau comes in and finds Scully asleep at the desk, pictures of the ship's writing on her computer. He tells her that the virus Mulder got in Russia two years ago has been reawakened somehow, and that if she destroys it, Kritschgau will destroy her.

After this nice little head-scratching threat, Scully gets a phone call from Skinner telling her that Mulder has disappeared. She high-tails it to the hospital (duh, he's not there anymore) and they tell her that his mother signed him out. But Skinner won't get any more involved, saying he is in a comprimised position, so the less he knows, the better for both of them.

Muder's head: He's back on the beach, where a kid walks up to him and says in CSM's voice: "The child is father to the man." Mulder opens his eyes, and he's in the car with CSM in handcuffs. CSM spouts some platitudes at him, and lights Mulder a cigarette, which he refuses.

Scully's apartment: Scully's apartment looks different every time we see it, I swear. Anyway, Albert Hosteen is there, back from the dead (apparently), to tell her that she must find Mulder for the sake of us all. (As though she had just given up looking for him in one afternoon.)

The hospital: A doctor shows Scully that Mulder's mother's signature is on the sign out sheet, but also shows her surveillance videos that show someone spray-painting out the camera, except that we can see Mrs. Mulder talking to someone that happens to be holding a cigarette.

Mulder's head: Mulder and CSM arrive at the perfect suburban house, at which Mulder finds the perfect suburban neighbor in the form of a not-dead-just-really-relaxed Deep Throat who, in the funniest moment of the episode, whips out pictures of his wife and kids and invites Mulder over for dinner.

Mulder also has the perfect suburban wife in the form of Diana. (Um, ewwww. At least she didn't do anything kinky with the handcuffs after she took them off.)

The office: Scully receives a book, sender unknown, which provides the story of the Sixth Extinction. She calls Skinner to see if he sent it to her, but he hangs up on her. She goes up to see him and breaks through the assistant to see the aftermath of someone socking him in the solar plexus. We see the attacker (can you say "Krycek"?) slip something in his pocket before he pulls the fire alarm and gets lost in the crowd.

Mulder's head: Mulder and Diana have a lovely conversation when he goes to get the paper where she promises they'll go visit CSM after breakfast.

Washington: Scully goes to confront Kritschgau and finds her ship documents on his computer. He tells her he sent them to the National Institute of Health to be analyzed, but she won't tell him where she got them, being the smart cookie that she is.

Mulder's head: CSM answers the door in a lovely shirt and tie, and shows Mulder his sister.

The lab: CSM and Fowley look over Mulder, stretched out on his back with his arms out, as though on a cross, complete with some random contraption on his head made to look like a crown of thorns. (The Christ imagery is anything but subtle.)

FBI: Scully comes up behind Diana and offers her a cigarette, claiming she smells smoke on her. She asks her where Mulder is, but Diana, being a not-so-dumb cookie herself, just accuses her of not doing enough to save him.

The Mulder-Jesus lab: CSM is getting blood drawn for something. Now we're getting all up into the territory I don't understand.

Mulder's head: Mulder sees Diana in her wedding gown, then pregnant, then in a coffin, and he's now an old man. CSM is there.

The lab: Diana is eewwww-ingly stroking Mulder's face. She chides CSM for not giving him a choice, but CSM is getting undressed to undergo "the procedure" that I don't get.

Mulder's head: He's really old now. CSM encourages him to close his eyes to see what the kid on the beach wants to show him, and lo and behold, it looks like the ship Scully studied in Africa, but the kid is tearing it down.

Scully's apartment: Albert is back, telling her she's looking in the wrong place. She tells him that she wouldn't know how to save him even if she could find him. He pulls her to her knees and they begin to pray together.

The lab: CSM is now lying opposite Mulder. I suppose that he's trying to undergo some sort of transplant to get the immunity that Mulder has, but I don't know. Mulder's eyes are open and he looks at Diana, but doesn't move. Diana pulls off her little surgical mask and leaves the operation.

Mulder's head: He's still really old, lying in bed, dying. He wants CSM to open the curtains so he can see outside, but CSM won't do it. He tells Mulder that everyone is dead now, his sister, Deep Throat, Diana, Scully, and it's time for him to let go now too. He closes his eyes. CSM opens the curtain and looks out, and the whole world is burning.

Kritschgau's apartment: Someone, who we later see for sure is Ratboy, is setting fire to everything. He takes the computer and leaves. We see Kritschgau lying on the floor with a mysterious red circle in his forehead.

Scully's apartment: She wakes up in the middle of her living room floor, where she had knelt to pray with Albert. Someone slides something under her door: an envelope with a plastic swipe card-key in it.

The lab: All kinds of things are happening, with blood everywhere.

Mulder's head: We see Scully swipe the key. She goes in to where old Mulder is lying. He is relieved to see her, but she tells him that he's a traitor, a coward. That he took the wrong path, that CSM is lying to him, made him trade his quest for a comfortable life. She tells him to get up and fight, because where he is is not where he belongs. She leaves him there.

The lab: Scully swipes into the lab for real now. She finds Mulder there, still stretched out with a bandage on his head. He has some flashbacks to the old-age Mulder while Scully pleads with him to wake up. He finally does, they hug, everyone's crying.

Ahem... ever hear of the literary term "deus ex machina"? Look it up.

One week later, Mulder's apartment: Scully has come to see him, catching him getting ready to come to work. He was coming to tell her that Albert Hosteen died last night in New Mexico. (What, did Al just decide to whip off an e-mail to his old pal Mulder before going to meet that great Code Talker in the sky?) Scully realizes that he probably wasn't in her apartment after all. She breaks down, saying she doesn't know what's real anymore.

Then she tells him that Diana was found murdered. (Everybody now: WOO-HOO!!) (of course, no body, so... who knows.) However, Scully realized that Diana was the one who gave her the book about the Sixth Extinction, and the key to get into the lab, and she's sorry because she never trusted her and she knew Diana was Mulder's friend.

They get all huggy again, and he tells her about what he saw in his head, and that the only thing that was true was that she was there, his friend, telling him the truth. He tells her she's his constant and touchstone, she tells him he's hers, she pulls his head down to plant a big smooch on his forehead, and in a lovely moment of foreshadowing (two weeks from now) runs her hands over his cheeks and lets her thumbs linger on his mouth (after pulling a baseball cap tight on his head over the bandages. Um, ouch?).

Next week ("Hungry"): We leave the conspiracy and rejoin the body-organ-eating monster of the week type thing. Learned from Samantha that our intrepid agents aren't in it very much, that it's told from the monster's viewpoint. Should be fun.