1.23 "Roland" Trivia Quiz

Answer: In a wind tunnel

Ronald Surnow was working on a research project involving jet engine design with fellow researchers Dr. Keats and Dr.Nollette. The three got into an argument because Surnow wasn't willing to push the engine past Mach 15 for fear of damaging the prototype.

After the two other researchers left, Surnow entered the wind tunnel to make adjustments while janitor Roland Fuller remained in the lab. Roland then activated the wind tunnel, blowing Surnow into the engine. When Mulder and Scully met with Keats and Nollette the next morning, Mulder pointed out that Roland was the only person present in the laboratory when Surnow was killed, but Keats dismissed him as a suspect because of his disability.

Answer: In a car accident

When Mulder was explaining to Scully why they were investigating Surnow's death, he pointed out that Surnow was the second member of the research team to have died. When they arrived in the laboratory, Scully asked Keats and Nollette if they were certain that Grable's death was an accident because the nature of their work could be a target for industrial espionage.

Answer: The last line of handwriting didn't match the rest.

Scully was talking with Keats and Nollette in the wind tunnel when Mulder pointed to the whiteboard and asked, "Who wrote this?" Keats responded that Surnow had been working on it when he and Nollette left the previous evening. Mulder pointed out that the handwriting at the bottom of the board didn't match any of the handwriting above it. Nollette said that it wasn't his and denied that it could have been Roland Fuller's because "Roland isn't exactly a rocket scientist".

When Mulder asked a handwriting expert to compare the writing on the whiteboard, she found that the last line was the work of a fourth individual, but when he gave her the paper that he had taken from Roland, she said that the handwriting didn't match Roland's nor the other scientists.

Answer: Visions/dreams

When Mulder and Scully were first interviewing Roland, he had a violent vision of Dr. Keats' death, and it caused him to smash his jar of foil stars that he used to decorate his artwork. Later Mulder met with Roland and asked him to tell him about his dreams. Mulder shared a dream he had last night, which was more of a nightmare.

He said that he was swimming and could see his father underwater but he couldn't get to him. Roland said he couldn't tell Mulder his dreams because they were bad.

Answer: A tank of liquid nitrogen

Roland had received a vision of Keats' death while he was talking with Mulder and Scully, and he was awoken in the night with the same vision. He went to the laboratory where Keats was working alone and killed him, pushing his head into the barrel of liquid nitrogen and then dumping him on the floor, shattering his head. Roland squished Keats' ear as he was walking away.

The next day, when Mulder and Scully were investigating the death, Mulder told Scully that, "I don't think they'll be performing this experiment on 'Beakman's World'".

Answer: Roland's doodling

Mulder looked at the logins on the computer screen and determined that "Kman" was Keats and that the login ended at 12:31, which was about the time of his death. The last login was "Arthur", which they believed to be an old file of Arthur Grable's. Scully tried to access the file but didn't have the password so Mulder told her to try "15626" and it worked.

When Scully asked him how he knew what the password was, he showed her the paper he had taken from Roland when they were interviewing him. It had the numbers 15626 written multiple times on it. Looking at the files, Mulder said that "someone had been continuing [Grable's] work for the six months since he died".

Answer: Grable's head was cryogenically frozen.

Mulder and Scully had come to think that Grable had staged his own death and was using Roland to murder his colleagues. Roland had made a comment to Mulder that supported this: "People die. They go away, and they're not supposed to come back". Mulder told Nollette that the police report on the accident was "woefully incomplete" and that there was no mechanical or weather-related cause for the accident. Additionally, the body was never sent to the morgue, nor was a funeral held.

But Nollette told them that "Art could not have done the murders", and then he apparently told them where Grable's head was because they went to visit the facility. Grable's body had suffered too much damage in the accident to be saved, but his head was being preserved. According to the technician at the facility, the capsule where Grable's head was stored had been malfunctioning, but they couldn't find anything wrong with it.

Answer: They were identical twins.

Mulder and Scully found out that Arthur Grable had hired Roland to work at the laboratory. While they were comparing the records, Mulder and Scully discovered that both Dr. Grable and Roland were from Seattle and they were born on the same day. Dr. Grable was heavier than Roland and wore glasses and facial hair, but when they had a technician remove those features from a photo of Dr. Grable, he looked exactly like Roland. Additionally, when they viewed Dr. Grable's records at the cryonics facility, he had Roland listed as a tissue donor in his file.

Answer: Dr. Nollette

After Roland escaped from his home, Mulder and Scully went to the laboratory to try to find Dr. Nollette. While they discussed the case in the hallway, Dr. Nollette was watching them via the security camera. He heard them say that Grabel and Roland were brothers and that Grable's brain was "in a state of consciousness that no human has ever returned from" and that perhaps that state allowed Grable to have psychic ability with his brother.

When Scully asked why Grable would want to kill the other scientists, Mulder said that this was "a question that only Dr. Nollette can answer". Nollette then went to the cryonics facility and changed the temperature settings for the canister containing Grable's brain. Roland was at the laboratory and was able to continue Grable's work but as the temperature decreased, he began to struggle. Nollette discovered him there and pulled a gun on him, telling him "You did all the work, but I get all the glory", but he became distracted by the work Roland had done on the computer, and Roland was able to knock him out with a keyboard. Roland then dragged Nollette into the wind tunnel and started it up. Mulder and Scully arrived, and Scully was able to convince Roland to help turn off the wind tunnel just before Nollette blew into the engine.

The canister containing Grable's brain reached -150 degrees shortly after that and a flatline buzzer went off.

Answer: He was sent a psychiatric facility.

Scully told Mrs. Stodie, his care attendant, that the District Attorney hadn't decided whether to charge him with a crime yet and that he was being held for psychiatric evaluation. Mulder added that they had recommended that Roland be remanded back to her custody after the evaluation. While Mulder and Scully waited for him, Roland packed his bag, leaving his jar of foil stars with Tracy.