Det verkar som att Mulder lider av "ökad hjärnaktivitet" och en början av telepati som orsakades av "återvunnen" svart olja som han smittat med i episoden "Tunguska" tre år tidigare.
Här är uppdelningen:
Mulder is being held in a padded cell and is displaying abnormal brain activity.
Kritschgau believes Mulder has alien induced mind reading abilities and injects him with a drug (phenytoin) to slow down his brain activity.
Scully returns from Africa to discover Mulder in a coma induced by exposure to shards from an alien spaceship wreck
Och,
Kritschgau visits Scully and claims that Mulder's contact with the shard of an alien spaceship has reawakened the extraterrestrial black oil with which he was infected three years previously; because he is infected with the virus, Mulder is proof of alien life
Och,
Mulder is revealed to be dreaming everything: in reality he is in a government facility being tended to by doctors while The Smoking Man and Fowley watch. The Smoking Man is preparing to have portions of Mulder's cranial tissue—which have been infected and activated because of the alien virus—implanted into himself. During the operation, The Smoking Man admits that he believes that Mulder has become an alien-human hybrid, and that by taking Mulder's genetic material he alone will survive the coming alien onslaught.
Så kort svar, kontakt med skurkarna från det afrikanska rymdskeppet har återupptäckt den svarta oljeinfektionen som hittills varit vilande.