Plot
The episode opens with three men, fitted with futuristic combat gear and automatic weapons, entering the virtual reality game First Person Shooter. In a control room, Ivan and Phoebe, the game's programmers, are monitoring the players' vital signs. Only one of the players makes it to the second level of the violent game, where he encounters a female character in a fetishistic leather outfit. She introduces herself as Maitreya, stating, "This is my game". She then kills the player with a flintlock pistol.
Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) visit the headquarters of First Person Shooters's developers in Inland Empire, California, where they meet the Lone Gunmen, who work as consultants for the game. They look at the body of the player, which clearly displays a gunshot wound. Ivan claims there is no way a real gun could have been brought into the highly-secured building. The agents are shown a video from the game, featuring the female character who killed the player. Mulder takes the printout of the character and shows it to a detective, as he believes she is the killer.
Daryl Musashi, a famous computer hacker, arrives at the building and enters the game in order to kill Maitreya. However, the character cuts off Musashi's head and hands with a large medieval sword. Mulder receives a call from the Sheriff's Department that a woman similar to the one in the printout has been picked up. The woman, a stripper named Jade Blue Afterglow, tells the agents that she was paid by a medical imaging facility in Culver City to scan her body.
Mulder and Scully find out that the Lone Gunmen have become trapped inside First Person Shooter, with somebody trying to kill them. Mulder enters the game, where he sees Maitreya and follows her. In the real world, Phoebe tearfully admits to Scully that the female warrior was created by her as a sort of personal estrogenic outlet in a testosterone-fuelled environment. Maitreya was to be contained within Phoebe's personal separate project, but the character found her way into the First Person Shooter program.
Scully decides to join Mulder in the game, and two fight Maitreya together. Maitreya begins to duplicate herself, making the task of killing her more difficult. Finally, Maitreya sits atop a virtual tank and aims it at the agents. Phoebe admits there is one way to stop the game, but doing so will erase the whole game. Despite protests from Ivan, Phoebe gives Byers the kill command, effectively destroying Maitreya along with the game while saving Mulder and Scully. During Mulder's narration, we see that in the control room one of the monitors is still active. There, Ivan sees Maitreya's avatar, but with Scully's face.
Read more about this topic: First Person Shooter (The X-Files)
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