Scully goes through her options

She had to think. She had to approach this problem in a calm, rational way. She might not understand where her pants had gone, but there was no mystery the scientific method couldn't solve. All she had to do was take a deep breath and apply reason.

The first step was obviously to find another pair of pants, or something else to cover her below the waist. To solve the mystery of the vanishing pants, she had to explore the town and collect evidence. She couldn't explore the town and collect evidence without any pants on. Ergo, she had to find some pants.

In theory, Scully thought, the argument wasn't entirely sound. It was, as far as she knew, entirely legal for an attractive FBI agent to walk through a small town in Virginia with no pants on. Aside from social convention, there was no logical reason not to do it. The only problem was, the mere thought of doing that made Scully's toes curl inside her smart black pumps. It might not be very logical, but she was fairly sure that if anyone in Redford saw her walking around in her peach-coloured panties, she would melt into a little blushing puddle on the sidewalk. So that strategy was off the table.

But she couldn't stay in the phone booth. She'd be caught sooner or later, and there were no pants in the phone booth. Which meant that, if she was caught, she'd be caught without her pants. Which meant a little blushing puddle on the sidewalk. And Scully didn't want to be a little blushing puddle on the sidewalk.

The question was, where was she going to go?

She couldn't go into the diner. The diner was full of people, and the people all had eyes, which meant they would see her without her pants.

She couldn't go into the street. The street was even more full of people than the diner, and those people had even more eyes. Collectively, anyway. On an individual basis, she expected the average number of eyes was probably about the same. It's not like Redford was a town full of aliens or anything ridiculous like that.

She couldn't call anyone on the phone booth. She didn't know anyone in town who'd be able to help her. Mulder was too far away. She had the sheriff's number, but she wasn't going to introduce herself to the sheriff for the first time without any pants on. That sounded like a recipe for the little-blushing-puddle scenario.

There were spare pants back at the hotel, with her car. But getting back to the hotel would require her to run out into the street, and all the way back across town, with no pants.

Scully went back through her list of options, ticking them off one by one. She couldn't help but notice that every single one of them resulted in her being caught in public, by total strangers, with no pants on. It wasn't an ideal situation.