The X Files: Conduit

Sioux City, Iowa, is the location of this particular episode. Ruby Morris, a young woman whose mother has been involved in a UFO sighting when she was a girl, disappears from a site where she has been camping with her mother and little brother. Ever since, her little brother Kevin has been painting a series of zeros and ones on a pad, from clues he is taking from the white noise on the TV (Poltergeist anyone?).

Local law enforcement does not take the disappearance seriously because Ruby has been known to runaround with every other boy in town. Then one Tessa shows up to tell a tale of Ruby's relationship with a no-good boyfriend, who has not been showing up at his job for a few days. Then his body is found and it turns out that Tessa killed him because she was pregnant with his child and offed him in revenge for him hanging out with Ruby.

The ones and zeros little Kevin has been painting turn out to be top secret information, consequently getting him and his mother in trouble. She blames Mulder and Scully for the unwanted attention and does no longer want to speak with them. Mulder, of course, is not willing to give up and when he and Scully come to look for them in their house they are not there. What they find instead are more sheets of paper laid out on the ground floor. When Scully goes to the first floor and looks down she sees that they are actually a picture of Ruby.

Mulder takes this as a sign that the mother and boy must have returned to the site where Ruby disappeared. When the agents get there they find the two as well as a bruised and beaten Ruby, that may or may not have been returned from an abduction. Ultimately, her mother encourages her to not speak about her experience on account of herself having been ridiculed for speaking up all her life.

6/10