On this week’s The X-Files, Mulder and Scully learn about the extremes of human emotion from a pair of younger FBI agents that remind them of each other.
A young Muslim man is praying. He leaves his apartment. While driving through Southwest Texas, people in the car next to him start teasing him about his religion. He pulls up to a motel where he is greeted by another Muslim man.
The two men drive to an art museum where they pause and pray. When they enter the building, it explodes. They were suicide bombers.
Mulder and Scully watch a video where people hear trumpets playing from the heavens. The listeners believe the angels play them as a symbol of the end times. Enter FBI agents Miller and Einstein. They are investigating the bombing. One of the terrorists survived in a vegetative state. Miller wonders if Mulder and Scully know any necromancers that might be able to communicate with the comatose bomber. They don’t. The young agents leave.
A report on television at the airport says the art museum was showing paintings that insulted Islam. Miller comments that the bombers’ hate had to be learned. Scully calls Miller and says she wants to meet him in Texas to try a medical procedure on the bomber. Mulder then calls Einstein and asks her to come back to the office to discuss how to communicate with the terrorist. The new agents agree to meet them. Elsewhere, we see another radical creating a bomb.
Mulder suggests to Einstein that she dose him with magic mushrooms because studies show that users connected with something bigger than themselves – feelings of sacredness, peace, and joy after speaking with the dead or touching the face of God. She turns him down.
Back in Texas, Scully explains to Miller that some doctors have had success getting answers from comatose patients using MRI scans after prompting the brain with questions. The brain would light up in certain regions in relation to yes or no responses. She says the same can be achieved by reading the brain waves on the equipment attached to the bomber in his room.
Two men appear and tell Miller and Scully to leave. They say they’re from homeland security. Scully refuses to leave and Miller pulls out the camera on his phone causing them to flee. Einstein sees Scully in the room and calls Mulder inviting him to Texas.
Einstein meets Mulder outside the airport and hands him pills that she says she got from one of the research pioneers from the mushroom studies. He asks her why she changed her mind. She’s upset that Miller replaced her with Scully.
Another man and a nurse appear at the bomber’s room. The man tells Miller and Scully that the hospital is under bomb threat and they’re evacuating until they can scan the wing. He is very nasty about Muslims in general. Miller tells him off, then leaves the room with Scully. After they leave, the nurse turns off the patient’s life support. He starts to go into cardiac arrest.
Mulder and Einstein arrive and the nurse switches the machine back on. She tells them they’re supposed to evacuate, but they refuse. The nurse complains about Arab refugees being brought in by a plot from the United Nations to form terrorist cells. Einstein humors her. The nurse mentions that Mulder is gone.
Mulder dances down the hospital halls having hallucinations. He then walks down the street to a country-Western bar. He line dances, imagining himself surrounded by beautiful women rather than the middle aged couples that are there. He also sees the Lone Gunmen and Skinner sitting at his table. He eventually sees the smoking man in a boat where the bomber and his mother are passengers. The bomber is unconscious, but speaks to him in Arabic.
The other man creating explosives talks to six new bombers to prep them for a new attack.
Mulder wakes in a hospital bed with Skinner above him. Skinner tells him he was an embarrassment. Mulder tells him he took magic mushrooms, but Einstein breaks it to him that they were a placebo. He was high on the power of suggestion. Mulder tells them that he talked to the terrorist.
As Einstein is wheeling Mulder out of the hospital, he sees the bomber’s mother trying to get past the guards. He tells them to let her in. He brings her to her son’s room. She says that he came to her in her dreams and told her that he saw the faces of the innocents and lost his nerve. Her son then dies.
Mulder is reminded of his hallucinogenic vision and tells them all again that the bomber spoke to him. Miller asks him to repeat what the bomber told him, as he can translate Arabic. With some difficulty, Mulder remembers what he said. Miller translates it to “Babylon the hotel.” A SWAT team then finds the cell of terrorists at the hotel and arrests them.
Einstein congratulates Miller on his success. He tells her it was her and Mulder who did the real work. She says he kept the terrorist safe and alive long enough for Mulder’s plan to work. She says she did nothing. She comes to recognize the beauty in mystery.
Scully drives up to Mulder’s home. He’s confused as to how the placebo worked. He says he saw deep and unconditional love. Scully says she witnessed unqualified, unending hate. They wonder how to reconcile the two. They take a walk and Mulder talks about the Old Testament’s angry God, comparing Him to the radical Islamic God. He says suicide bombers are led by the power of suggestion. He wants to believe that mothers have a higher purpose than creating martyrs. Scully suggests God’s will can be known by opening hearts and truly listening. Suddenly, Mulder hears trumpets coming from the sky.