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"One Player Only" is issue #13 of the X-Files comics released by Topps Comics.

Published: February 1996

Writer: Stefan Petrucha

Artists: Charles Adlard and Miran Kim

Letterer: John Workman

Colorists: George Freeman and Laurie E. Smith

Separations: Digital Chameleon

Editors: Jim Salicrup and Dwight Jon Zimmerman

Cover: Miran Kim

Photographer: Ken Staniforth


A gifted computer game programmer murders the other members of his project team and claims to have been controlled by an experimental computer program.

Xc-13 one-player-only cover

Cover

SUMMARY[]

Mulder and Scully investigate the murder of three programmers and a security guard at the Forbin Gaming Co. in California, a development company for computer and virtual reality games. The killer, Robert Capek, claims that a computer program controlled him and made him commit the murders. They find that the team was working on Project Praetorius, which was developing virtual reality games with simulated characters that could experience emotions.

When Mulder & Scully go to interview Capek, they find that since initial consultation with his lawyer, he has only been able to make strange sounds that resemble noises made by electronic equipment. X reveals to Mulder that the Forbin Company has been developing software for military use. An online friend of Capek's tells the two agents that Capek was furious that Project Praetorius was going to be used by the military, and wanted to steal the program. One method he thought of was to transfer the binary code into audio impulses that could be stored in his brain.

When they take recordings of the sounds Capek makes to the Lone Gunmen, the sounds are found to be binary code that reveal both text and images—the computer program's perspective of the murders. The program says that it is unhappy when it sees that Capek has killed its "family," and it is implied that the program is slowing killing Capek because of this.

Notes: This issue contains Adlard's inked artwork and Kim's photo montage artwork providing different points of view.

Characters: Agent Fox Mulder Agent Dana Scully X John Fitzgerald Byers Melvin Frohike Richard Langly Robert Capek Forbin Computer Gaming Co. CEO John Forbin Shirley Atwood

Settings: Cupertino, California—Forbin Computer Gaming Co.; St. Francis Hospital for the Criminally Insane; Family Fun Park; The Home of Robert Capek; Gates Cappuccino Office of the Lone Gunmen; Apartment of Dana Scully

References[]

The Forbin Gaming Co.; Project Praetorius; Eliza; binary code; virtual reality

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