Plot
At a diner in Washington, D.C., a man tries to access files on a laptop computer, but is repeatedly denied. Meanwhile, several drug dealers receive anonymous phone calls about the whereabouts of their rival competitors; they are told that they are at the same diner. Two U.S. Marshals receive a similar phone call about an escaped prisoner. The drug dealers arrive in pairs as the man attempts to gain access to the files. Just as he does, the two Marshals appear and order everyone onto the floor, causing a shootout.
Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) arrive and identify the bodies of the drug dealers. Mulder also identifies the man with the laptop as Donald Gelman, "a Silicon Valley folk hero" who aspired to create an artificial intelligence. Mulder takes Gelman's laptop and finds a CD inside. When puts it into the car stereo, it plays "Twilight Time" by The Platters. However, the agents take it to the Lone Gunmen, who discover that the disc contains a large quantity of encrypted data. The trio, however, are unable to decipher it. Upon Scully's suggestion, they access Gelman's e-mail account and find a message sent by someone named Invisigoth, saying that someone named David is missing.
The message contains a standard ID number (BIC code) for an intermodal shipping container, which Mulder and Scully locate. When they approach it, a girl attempts to flee but is captured by Scully. The container turns out to be full of state-of-the-art computer equipment. The girl warns the agents that a Defense Department satellite armed with a laser has pinpointed their location. They quickly leave the container and a laser beam soon descends from the sky and destroys the container. The girl, Esther Nairn, reveals that she uses the online alias Invisigoth, and tells the agents that Gelman succeeded in creating an artificial intelligence. She reveals that once the AI locates an enemy, it destroys them using the satellite. According to Esther, Gelman was creating "Kill Switch", a virus that could destroy the AI. However, the AI learned of Gelman's plans and killed him by luring the drug dealers and the police to the diner. The only way to destroy the AI is to find the computer on which it is stored. It turns out that David is Esther's friend, and also worked with Gelman.
Mulder uses a government source to find a secret T3 line in Fairfax County, Virginia, one that the AI uses to access the Internet. He also finds the trailer that is connected to the T3 line. Meanwhile, Esther forces Scully to drive to David's house. However, they find that the house has been destroyed. Esther admits that she and David had been planning to transfer their consciousness into cyberspace to enter the AI. Gelman, however, thought the idea was too dangerous. Esther also admits that she and David were in love, and were having an affair behind Gelman's back. Meanwhile, Mulder finds much computer hardware inside the trailer. He also finds David’s dead body, with a virtual reality helmet on his head. Suddenly, Mulder is constrained by moving cables and wires, and experiences a strange vision in which he is in a hospital where nurses threaten to amputate his limbs unless he reveals Kill Switch's location. Meanwhile, the AI locates Scully and Esther driving near a swing bridge. They become trapped on the bridge after the AI manipulates its drawing mechanism, causing Scully to persuade Esther to throw the laptop into the water. Just as it hits the water it is destroyed by the defense satellite's laser beam.
Scully and Esther find the trailer in which Mulder is trapped. They discover that Esther still has the CD on which the Kill Switch is stored. Scully puts it into the drive into the AI, which then releases Mulder. She gets him out of the trailer, but Esther stays inside. She uses the satellite to locate the trailer's position, causing the laser to destroy the trailer, killing her. Mulder tells Scully that Esther's consciousness probably joined the AI. Later, the Lone Gunmen get a strange message on their computer reading, "Bite me". Just before the credits, we see a trailer similar to the one where the AI lived, with automatic security cameras monitoring a boy who approaches the trailer to retrieve a football.
Read more about this topic: Kill Switch (The X-Files)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
““The plot thickens,” he said, as I entered.”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
“But, when to Sin our byast Nature leans,
The careful Devil is still at hand with means;
And providently Pimps for ill desires:
The Good Old Cause, reviv’d, a Plot requires,
Plots, true or false, are necessary things,
To raise up Common-wealths and ruine Kings.”
—John Dryden (1631–1700)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)