Chris Carter

Image credit: Chris Carter Photograph by Emily Shur

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Chris Carter

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What does a lifelong surfer do when his phenomenally successful TV series finally comes to an end? Hits the waves, man. ''Traveling and surfing'' is what Chris Carter, creator of The X-Files and self-described ''pilgrim,'' has been doing since the show's May 2002 sign-off. That and getting his pilot's license, running a few marathons, teaching himself music...and writing, of course. He just finished a film adaptation of The World of Ted Serios, by the psychoanalyst Jule Eisenbud. Eisenbud believed Serios, a Chicago hotel porter, could project his thoughts onto a Polaroid. ''He believed he had a reproducible paranormal ability, and was shamed by scientists for his belief in that phenomenon,'' says Carter, 48. Sounds a bit X-Files-ish.

But what Carter is writing isn't nearly as Mulderian as where he's writing it: He's just begun a three-month stint as writer-in-residence at the Kavli Institute, a center for the study of (among other things) the arcane branch of physics known as string theory. ''It's almost faith-based science,'' he says. ''Faith in the numbers. It's unprovable experimentally.'' Speaking of faith: What of the X-Files movie sequel? Carter blames the delay on tangled contracts. The story was completed last year, and he says David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson are on board. ''We'd want to tell a Mulder and Scully story, specifically.'' Entertainment law, it seems, is not as malleable as the laws of physics. But Carter's a believer: ''The chances are very good.'' And the truth won't stay out there forever.