MULDER: Look, Scully, I know it's not your inclination but... did you ever look up into the night sky and feel certain that... not only was something up there but... it was looking down on you at that exact same moment and was just as curious about you as you are about it?

SCULLY: Mulder, I think the only thing more fortuitous than the emergence of life on this planet is that, through purely random laws of biological evolution, an intelligence as complex as ours ever emanated from it. Uh, the, the very idea of intelligent alien life is not only astronomically improbable but at it's most basic level, downright anti-Darwinian.

MULDER: I understand what you're saying, but I, I, I just need to keep looking.

SCULLY: Yeah, well, don't look too hard. You might not like what you find.

MULDER: I see the correlation, but just because I work for the federal government doesn't mean I'm an expert on cockroaches.

MULDER: Did you know that the federal government, under the guise as the department of agriculture, as been conducting secret experiments up here?

SCULLY: Mulder, you're not thinking about trespassing onto government property again, are you? I know that you've done it in the past, but I don't think that this case warrants...

MULDER: It's too late, I'm already inside.

MULDER: Have you ever come across, uh, a type of cockroach that, uh, is attracted to people?

BAMBI BERENBAUM: Most cockroaches have been known to actually wash themselves after being touched by humans.

BAMBI BERENBAUM: Since an insect's exoskeleton is a dielectric surrounding the conductive medium of its body fluid, when introduced into an electrical field, a brushed discharge will result in a colored flare.

MULDER: What is that supposed to prove?

BAMBI BERENBAUM: Well, it's my theory that UFOs are actually insect swarms. I don't know if you know anything about UFOs, but all the characteristics of a typical sighting are shared with nocturnal insects swarming through an electrical air field... the sudden appearance of a colored, glowing light hovering in the night sky, moving in a nonmechanical matter, possibly humming. Creating interference with radio and television signals. Then suddenly disappearing.

BAMBI BERENBAUM: Everything about insects is fascinating. They are truly remarkable creatures. So beautiful, and so honest.

MULDER: Honest?

BAMBI BERENBAUM: Eat, sleep... defecate, procreate. That's all they do. That's all we do, but at least insects don't kid themselves that it's anything more than that.

MULDER: ... did you know that the ancient Egyptians worshipped the scarab beetle and possibly erected the pyramids to honor them, which may be just giant symbolic dung heaps?

MULDER: No, no, I'm not afraid of them [insects]. I hate them. One day back when I was a kid, I, uh... I was climbing this tree when I noticed this leaf walking towards me. It took forever for me to realize that it was no leaf.

SCULLY: A praying mantis?

MULDER: Yeah, I had a praying mantis epiphany and, as a result, I screamed. No, not... not a girlie scream, but the scream of someone being confronted by some before unknown monster that had no right existing on the same planet I inhabited. Did you ever notice how a praying mantis' head resembles an alien's head? I mean, the mysteries of the natural world were revealed to me that day, but instead of being astounded, I was... repulsed.

MULDER: Your contract is with NASA?

IVANOV: The goal is to transport a fleet of robots to another planet and allow them to navigate the terrain with more intricacy than any space probe has done before. It, it sounds slightly fantastic, but the only obstacle I can foresee is devising a renewable energy source. In any case, this is the future of space exploration. It does not include living entities.

MULDER: I'm just speculating here, but if extraterrestrial lifeforms do exist...

IVANOV: Oh, there's no need for speculation, I believe they do.

MULDER: And assuming that they're more technologically advanced than we are, and if your own ideas about the future of space exploration are correct, then...

IVANOV: Then the interplanetary explorers of alien civilizations will likely be mechanical in nature. Yes. Anyone who thinks alien visitation will come not in the form of robots, but of living beings with big eyes and gray skin has been brainwashed by too much science-fiction.

MAN #3: Roaches aren't attacking people, lady. They're spreading the Ebola virus. We're all going to be bleeding from our nipples!

MULDER: Scully, if an alien civilization were technologically advanced enough to build and send artificially intelligent robotic probes to the farthest reaches of space, might they not have also been able to perfect the extraction of methane fuel from manure? An abundant and replenishing energy source filled on a planet with dung-producing creatures.

MULDER: The development of our cerebral cortex has been the greatest achievement of the evolutionary processes. Big deal. While allowing us the thrills of intellect and the pangs of self-consciousness, it is all too often overruled by our inner, instinctive brain, the one that tells us to react, not reflect, to run rather than ruminate.

Maybe we have gone as far as we can go, and the next advance, whatever that may be, will be made by beings we create ourselves using our own technology, lifeforms we can design and program not to be ultimately governed and constricted by the rules of survival.

Or perhaps that step forward has already been achieved on another planet by organisms that had a billion years head start on us. If these beings ever visited us, would we recognize what we were seeing? And upon catching sight of us, would they react in anything but horror at seeing such mindless, primitive, hideous creatures?