Scully's teaching autopsies to to queasy medical students, while Mulder's job is to listen to FBI wiretaps of two-bit thugs discussing the finer points of lap dancing. Mulder and Scully meet clandestinely in the parking lot of the Watergate Hotel to discuss the closing of the X-Files. Mulder mentions the famed Palomar observatory in San Diego, California, and how its founder George Ellery Hale claimed an elf climbed in his window and gave him the idea for the telescope. The 200-inch Hale Telescope, in service since 1948, remains one of the largest on Earth. Senator Richard Matheson calls upon Mulder to visit the Arecibo Observatory near San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Radio astronomy works by gathering radio waves from outer space rather than visible light.
SETI lost its government funding after the Republicans won Congress in 1994, but it survives as a private institute, funded by some of the biggest names in the computer industry. Mulder heads off to Puerto Rico, leaving a very puzzled Scully wondering about his whereabouts. She goes to search his apartment,where she recovers a printout of the data from Arecibo given him by Senator Matheson. He and Scully narrowly escape, with only a single reel of data tape from the Arecibo computers as evidence. In the end, though, that single reel turns out to be blank.