You ever start something that seemed like a good idea at the time, till you realized how daunting a task it actually is?

That’s what I am feeling about my ‘X-File A Day’ column at the moment.

It’s a show worth revisiting, till you realize that it ran nine seasons.

Then again, my mom didn’t raise any quitters (and besides.  I’d rather invest than surrender, it at all possible.  I am only working on my second piece, which is hardly time to give up the ghost).

And speaking of ghosts, the seventh episode,”Ghost in the Machine,” is pretty neat.   The idea of a homicidal artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t new, but it’s carried out well.

What’s most interesting about the episode is that Mulder and Scully actually don’t get the case, but instead Mulder is asked to assist by his friend, Jerry Lamana (Wayne Duvall) in an investigation of the death of the chairman of Eurisko, a technology company.

What brought about his death is the aforementioned artificial intelligence, known very unimaginatively as COS, or Central Operating System.  It was created by Brad Wilczek (Rob LeBelle) who seems  loosely modeled on Steve Jobs.

Interestingly enough, I noticed something about this episode that I didn’t the first saw it, which is that the COS seems like as if it were the id  of Wilczek, and capable of doing things that he couldn’t.

Like murder.

The episode, like most ‘X-Files’ episodes, alludes to government malfeasance – when it isn’t saying it outright.  In this instance they were attempting to reverse engineer the COS AI for their own needs.