By Daniel
A commuter train pulls into the station early in the morning somewhere, while some ne'er-do-well asks people on the platform for spare change. He's holding a sign that says "God could be watching," but it doesn't seem to be inspiring anyone to help him, which realistically everyone who claims to follow the Bible ought to do. He does his best to remain polite and offer a "God bless you anyway" with each rejection, and you start to feel kind of bad for the guy, but then he bumps into a suit, and as we all know, that means the suit's wallet has been lifted.
Back inside the train, the lights start flickering. The passengers look around, bewildered. Then, a few things happen simultaneously: the lights go out, the passengers are all dead (they haven't moved from their seats, but they are suddenly ashen, motionless, and their eyes are closed), and there's a man standing at the back of the car. That man is Peter Weller. Twenty-three years after the fact, I can't see him as anything else but RoboCop. I suppose it helps here that he's not wearing the suit.
He looks around the car (the only light is what's coming in through the windows), looking distressed at being in a car full of corpses, and goes to get off the train as it slows to a stop. The panhandler greets him with a "spare change?" as he gets off, but Peter Weller says nothing and hustles away down the platform. The kid gets on the train, and he's considerably more freaked out by all the dead bodies around him. As Peter Weller walks away, the kid starts hammering on the window: "No, please! Let me out of here!" Well, the door is right there, you wuss.
After the opening credits, we see Walter writing a letter. And it's not, as I assumed, a letter to some soft drink company advising them on the best way to improve their root beer formula. We can see a couple of sentence fragments: "Peter, I have struggled with this unimaginable secret" and "nothing I would not do for you." The phone rings, and Walter lets the answering machine pick up. I love the way that people in movies and television never use voicemail, because then we wouldn't be able to hear the message being left by the caller. It's Peter, figuring Walter is home and asking him to pick up. Several times, first by smilingly introducing himself as Walter's son, and then by reminding him which button on the phone to push. Peter's in the lab, looking like his soldering something.
Walter makes no move to answer, and Peter eventually gives up, and just tells him to get his kit together, because Olivia told him about an incident on a train, and Peter knows how much Walter likes trains, so he figures it would cheer him up.
By Daniel
Walter finishes up the letter and folds it in thirds and puts it in an envelope marked "Peter" and folds his hands and broods.
As the Fringe team strolls up to the train full of dead people, Peter asks Olivia if she's noticed anything weird about Walter. She says she hasn't, and Peter says his dad has been avoiding him all week, has stopped eating, and wouldn't even look at him in the car ride over. Most damning of all: Peter bought him a box of Peek Freans that he hasn't even noticed. "All week it feels like he's been enveloped in this ... sadness," he says. Olivia says she hasn't noticed anything, and you don't have to be able to read people expertly, as Peter has in the past claimed he can, to tell Olivia's lying, what with her swallowing and being unable to maintain eye contact with Peter. However, if he senses something amiss, he doesn't really show it.
On the train, Walter checks out all the corpses, sitting peacefully in their seats. He examines the bodies and thoughtfully gazes at a crucifix, hanging around a woman's neck, that appears to me made of copper wire wrapped around metal. Then he starts poking around her seatmate's leg, much to the annoyance of an FBI agent who demands to know what he's doing. He explains that he's checking their underwear, because people who die suddenly often vacate their bladders (and bowels). "Get off this train," she says, firmly, and Olivia has to step in to save Walter, who seems so downcast that he hasn't even snapped at this woman to go fuck herself. That's how depressed he is. Although, really, what's the woman's problem? Who did she think this guy was examining dead bodies in a crime scene that's been sealed off?
Anyway, his first theory is collective heart failure. Peter scoffs that all of them had a heart attack at the same time, and Walter half-heartedly suggests it was sympathetic. Contagious, like yawning. Man, even his crime-scene theories are just going through the motions! He doesn't even have any interest in arguing with his son.
Meanwhile, Olivia's looking around, and she asks Walter if his theory would suggest why all the lights are out in the car. Nope! Not only that, but Walter points out that there should be battery backup, unless it wasn't maintained properly.
While Peter grabs a BlackBerry from a dead woman's hand, Broyles comes to snag Olivia so she can talk to a kid who saw a six-foot brown-haired man in a trenchcoat getting off the train. "The man didn't speak to him or acknowledge him. He just exited down the stairs of the platform," says Broyles, who's awaiting word on the possibility of surveillance footage.
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By Daniel
Back in the train car, Peter's still contemplating the BlackBerry before he stands up and exits, yelling for "Agent Dunham." I like the formality between them at the crime scene. After he leaves, a crime-scene tech notices an envelope by the feet of the woman Peter got the BlackBerry from. He picks it up and brings it to another investigator, "Rod," and hands over the envelope marked "Peter," and Walter manages to notice, whilst checking people for skid marks, and anxiously claims the envelope, just before Peter gets back on board with Broyles in tow, telling him that all the batteries on every electrical device on the train are dead. "All the cellphones, laptops, MP3 players. They're all completely drained of power," he says. Broyles asks Walter for theories, and Walter doesn't have any yet, but at least acknowledges that his half-assed "collective heart failure" theory is probably wrong. He adds that he'll need to take six or seven bodies back to the lab, and by this point, nobody bothers to raise an eyebrow at all the corpses that make their way back to Harvard, I suppose.
An agent gets on board, holding a surveillance photo of RoboCop, and the agents look at it and ask a bunch of useless questions like "Who is this guy?" and "How did he kill everything on this train?"
Later, back at the Harvard lab, Walter and Astrid are dissecting the bodies, much to Astrid's general disgust, who has finally realized she's not getting paid enough for stuff like this (i.e. cutting up dead bodies, baking cancer pizza, getting stabbed in the neck with hypodermics, etc.). Walter's saying that dying organisms struggle for their last breath, but these people, unusually, appear to have simply been switched off.
Peter comes in, cheerfully asking how things are going, and Astrid says it's not very good, as Walter asks her to take samples of a specific corpse's lung, brain and skin. Peter chirps, "Whatever it is, I'm sure you're gonna make sense out of it, Walter," and I love how Peter has gone from someone who loudly tells everyone that his dad and his dad's theories are crazy and ridiculous to the president of the We Love Walter Bishop Fan Club.
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By Daniel
Walter is still seeming standoffish, so Peter comes right out and asks him if something's up, something that he wants to talk about. Walter says everything is fine, and then asks Astrid (whom he calls "Astro") to show him the cellular samples. After studying them, he calls them "extraordinary," and Astrid notices that the "ATP concentrations," whatever those are, are unually low. "Cellular process should continue for hours, even after death, but this man's mitochondria seems to have ceased functioning well before it should," says Walter, and even as he's asking Astrid to take samples of the rest, she's suggesting it herself, and they say in unison: "And see if there's a trend," and they look at each other, amazed, and I think we should just start calling Astrid Radar O'Reilly. Peter smiles, as does Astrid.
Anyway, Walter briefly brightens up as he tells Peter that it appears as though all the people were just drained of energy, just like all the batteries. "It wasn't just their hearts that stopped beating. It was every cell in their bodies," he says, and then when Peter asks what could possibly do that, Walter's awkward again and says he has no idea.
Over at the federal building, Walter's going over surveillance tapes on monitors, telling Olivia that twenty years ago, a person walking through Boston for two hours showed up on an average of ten different surveillance cameras, but now it's hundreds. "Bad for privacy, good for us," says Olivia. Yeah, well, NOW YOU KNOW WHAT THE TEABAGGERS ARE ON ABOUT. Broyles shows the route that RoboCop took, and eventually he winds up at a café, where he spent almost forty-five minutes before leaving. "The guy kills a train full of people and then stops for a meal?" asks Olivia. Point of order! You know, you don't actually KNOW yet that this guy killed everyone on the train. I'm just saying. Broyles says the trail goes cold there, as the guy didn't show up on any more cameras, so Olivia heads to Café Wilusa to check things out.
There, an Anna Kendrick-esque waitress recognizes the picture that Olivia shows her, confirming that the guy was there that morning. "He comes in all the time. Weird guy," she says, explaining that he's always drawing on the napkins and the placemats: "Some kind of math, I think. To be honest, my higher math ends at calculating my tip," she says, so it's totally fair for her to call a guy "weird" just because he knows more math than just how to calculate two percent of something. Olivia asks if the dude ever pays with a credit card, and sure enough, he did. The waitress hands over the slip, and Olivia's got a name: Alistair Peck.
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By Daniel
It's not too long before the FBI is kicking in Alistair Peck's front door, but the place appears to be empty. There are blackboards covered in mathematical formulae, though, along with math-covered papers tucked all over the place, and Olivia radios to have the Bishops sent up.
Walter, eyeing the equations, calls the formulae "extraordinarily complex," as though someone is ever going to obsessively wallpaper their apartment with pieces of paper saying "2+2=4."
"Physicists use diagrams like these to short-hand ideas about how subatomic particles behave. These are sublime," says Walter. Meanwhile, Peter's found Peck's astrophyics degree, in a smashed frame. "He teaches at MIT," he says.
Walter excitedly says that if he's looking at the formulae correctly, that Peck has taken Einstein's theory "and turned it on his ear." Walter says he only grasps portions of it, but it does confirm that Peck was dealing with tremendous energy "to do ... whatever it is he's doing."
So the FBI agents are loading boxes of stuff into vans as Peck shows up on the street, coming back from ... oh, let's say Old Navy. He decides to just stroll right into the house and asks what they're doing with his things, and instantly has just about every gun in the place pointed at him. Not sure exactly what he was expecting here.
Meanwhile, upstairs, Olivia warily eyes a table full of surgical tools, and Peter's reaching for some sort of album, when they get word that Peck's there, so they head downstairs. Somewhat unnecessarily (not to mention kind of hilariously) Olivia pulls her own gun on Peck, who has his hands up. I bet that Olivia's one of those people who strolls up and pushes the elevator button a few more times even though there are people already standing there.
We can see wires and metal poking out of his arms, and Peter says that that must explain what all the surgical tools were for. "What did you do to the people on that train? Twelve innocent people," she says.
Peck shakes his head. "Those people aren't dead, miss. Not permanently." Olivia's all, 'fraid so! And Peck says, "But they soon won't be. Although, others soon will be, I'm afraid." That kind of talk isn't exactly going to get the agents to put their guns down. Olivia orders him to get down on the ground, but he's suddenly too concerned with the agents taking his equations out the door. "Don't take my computations! They're meaningless to you. It is well within my ability to make it so that you are never in possession of the things I require," he says, cryptically.
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By Daniel
And now Walter gets in on the action; up until now, he'd just been kind of watching, fascinated, and now he gleefully points out that Peck has implanted a "Faraday mesh" (also known as a Faraday cage). Peter, the only other supposed genius-level intellect in the room, has no idea what Walter's talking about: "A shield, to create a temporal pocket around your body, of course," says Walter. Peck seems somewhat surprised that someone there has some idea what he's actually done, and starts to shimmer and wobble, while Olivia futilely yells at him to stop whatever he's doing.
And then, suddenly, Peck's back on the train. And the panhandler is outside, and as Peck gets off the train the panhandler approaches him again. "I'm sorry you have to go through this again," he says, and keeps on going down the platform. And once again, the kid gets on, and starts to scream at the train car of horrors.
So here's what I don't understand about the time-travel as it's presented in this episode, so if anyone who's smarter than me and understands it can explain it to me, I'd appreciate it: this is the second time Peck has jumped back to the train car. He hasn't rewound time, as he clearly has memories of the first jump and will use his knowledge of the police investigation to elude capture a little bit longer this time around, but reinserted himself back in the time stream of the day. So: shouldn't there be another Peck there? Himself, from the first time he jumped back? I realize that this would theoretically set up one of those time-travel paradoxes, given that the jump kills everyone in the immediate area, which means that the first Peck is killed, but that would mean that he couldn't jump back again, which would mean that the first Peck wasn't killed, which means he could jump back again, etc. etc.
Anyway, we see again Walter writing the letter, and Peter calling, trying to coax him to pick up. We watch again as the Fringe team approaches the train car and Peter and Olivia discuss how weirdly Walter is behaving. We see a little bit more of Walter's arrival on the crime scene, as well as Broyles, who is handed the initial report from an agent who's interviewing the panhandling kid.
Walter on the train, talking about a collective heart attack. Olivia, asking why all the lights on the train are out. And then Broyles shows up to tell Olivia about the panhandling kid, only the information he gives now is that the guy was in a rain coat, and he touched the handrail, so they're dusting it for prints.
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By Daniel
And when Olivia talks to the kid, he's able to tell her that the guy said, "I'm sorry you have to go through this again." The "again" gives Olivia and Broyles pause. And then Peter steps off to tell her about the dead batteries (this time he was actually standing on the envelope, like nice observation skills, Peter), and the crime-scene guys find Walter's letter to Peter again, and once more he claims it.
And now we start to diverge a little bit more, with Olivia at the federal building talking to Peter back at the lab, with him telling her that the victims were just completely drained of biological energy. And after she hangs up with him, Broyles tells her that the fingerprint they found matched a set that NASA has on file for a Dr. Alistair Peck. "He was classified as part of a think tank. We don't know much more than that yet," says Broyles, and Olivia points out that now they have an address for the guy, 412 Inman Street.
So different methods, same result: a raid on Peck's place. This time it's Walter who discovers Peck's astrophysics degree, and as Olivia looks at it, she freezes for a moment. "Wow, I'm having déjà vu," she says.
Peter chuckles and says he read that déjà vu is fate's way of telling you that you're exactly where you're supposed to be. "That's why you feel like you've been there before. You are right in line with your own destiny," he says. Olivia asks him if he believes that, and Peter says no: "It's a bit mystical for my taste. I never get them, myself. Maybe that's 'cause I'm not on track with my own destiny." Walter looks like he's aged 10 years just hearing that.
And then Peter finds the photo album that Walter just about discovered the last time the FBI raided Peck's place, and he shows it to Olivia. There are photos of Peck with a woman, and on the back is written "Me and Alistair." "But who are you?" Olivia asks, mistakenly thinking that they've brought along the Massive Dynamic technology that allows you to speak to photographic images. Olivia starts exploring a little bit more, and finds two toothbrushes in the bathroom. "Well, one of them is bound to be back sooner or later. Hopefully sooner."
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By Daniel
So, some time later, the Fringers are awaiting the return of either Me or Alistair, with an agitated Walter looking out the window. He wants to go home now, and Olivia seems to agree -- it's not like they can't just have some bottom-of-the-command-chain agents stake the place out. Walter quietly asks Olivia if he might ride with her. "I can't drive home with him. I can't look at him," he says.
Olivia tells him that he can't keep doing this, because Peter knows that something's upsetting him. Walter explains that he's written a letter, because it explains everything in just the right words instead of him "stammering in fits and starts." The only problem is that whenever he thinks about telling Peter, he envisions his son's reaction, over and over again. "And every time, the outcome is terrible. But I will do it. But first... there's something I'm waiting for, Agent Dunham. Something important." Your Amazon.com order?
Before Walter can explain, Peter strolls up with round metal parts. "They're what you'd use to cast machine parts, but these look like they were handmade," he says. Walter, examining them, notes one is dated several months ago, and another one even earlier. Surely it'd be odder if they were dated yesterday? "He refers to them as prototypes," says Walter. "But prototypes for what?" asks Peter.
Elsewhere, in a machine shop, Peck appears to be grinding one of the parts. And once it's done to his satisfaction, he unbuttons his shirt and -- we get a glimpse of his scarred torso that resembles burnt cheese covering a horrific collection of metallic wiring and coals. Poor Peter Weller -- typecast as a cyborg!
Over at MIT, Prof. Carol Bryce, in her office, tells Olivia and Peter that Peck was a professor there for six years. "His focus -- obsession -- was particle acceleration. Um, creating wormholes without a particle collider," she says. See, this is why Olivia brings Peter along: to translate: "You're saying that Dr. Peck's area of expertise was time travel?" he says. "He kept cranking out theories, and eventually every one of them was over our heads," she says. Olivia says that must have been "frustrating" for his superiors, and Bryce amends that to "embarrassing," telling them that Alistair was in danger of being fired, but he saved everyone the trouble and left about a year ago.
Olivia hands over the photo of Peck with the woman and asks Bryce if it's Peck's wife. "Ah, the fiancée. Her name is Arlette," says Bryce, who doesn't remember her last name. Peter asks if Bryce knows any other friends or people Peck knew. "That's the sad thing. He was kind to everyone, but he never socialized. I think I was his only friend," says Bryce. Well, you and the fiancée.
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By Daniel
What Bryce does have, however, are a few thick journals that Peck sent her about six months ago to proofread, in the hopes of having them published. Olivia asks if they can take them. "They're only gathering dust here. They are pretty dense. Most would say it's gobbledygook," says Bryce. "Well, I happen to know someone who's fluent in gobbledygook," says Olivia, and she and Peter share a smile.
Back at the lab, Walter strides in with the journals to announce that he's finished reading them. "In another twenty years, with the assistance of some other great minds, I will have absorbed this information," he says. Or if maybe you spent more than an afternoon with those thick journals, I imagine. I also like the mention of "other" great minds. Anyway, Walter says that Peck has conceived of some extraordinary theories and is possibly implementing them: "He may be able to travel through time. Conceivably. Einstein himself theorized this," he says. On a sheet of paper, Walter writes down 10 and 11, for 10 a.m. and 11 a.m., on opposite sides of the paper, and connects them with a line, and explains that Einstein said if something could propel an object faster than the speed of light, then time would appear to bend. Helpfully, he bends the edges of the paper to demonstrate. "When those two folds connect, a tremendous amount of energy is required to absorb the jump," he says. Are we pretending this is still Einstein's theory? Anyway, that's why all the people and batteries were drained of energy. "Then what you're saying, Walter, is that Peck's moving through time is what killed all of these people on the train," says Peter. Yep, says Walter, and not only that, but if he's right, then they may well have apprehended the man already, possibly several times. Olivia looks like her mind has been blown, so fortunately Astrid's got something a little more concrete for her: she's found Peck's fiancée. Arlette Turling is her name, and her driver's license information is coming through. Olivia confirms the picture is the same woman in the photograph, and tells Astrid to find out whatever she can, like she needs to tell Astrid that.
Meanwhile, Walter is explaining to Peter that the third volume of the journals is unfinished, with a handwritten section at the back, entitled "Achieve the Arlette Principle." Say whaaaat? asks Olivia. She's looking at the file, and she thinks she knows why Peck is doing this: Arlette was killed in a car accident 10 months ago. Maybe he's going back in time to save her!
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By Daniel
Walter says, quietly, that grief can drive people to extraordinary lengths, and he and Olivia can barely look at each other, with Peter seeming to notice how affected his dad seems.
Walter recovers and says that, going by Peck's work and given how much energy was drawn when he landed at the station that morning, he figures that they witnessed just a twelve-hour jump, so for a ten-month jump, the results would be devastating. Olivia asks how many casualties there would be. "It would depend where he landed," says Walter, who then just estimates hundreds. Well, then, don't you think you would remember hundreds of people dying ten months ago in exactly the same way the twelve people died this morning? I realize that Peck hasn't left yet, but if he does leave, then he arrived ten months ago, no? So either he didn't do it or he found a way to avoid killing hundreds of people. Kind of like how we know that if humanity does eventually figure out time travel, obviously nobody goes back to kill Hitler before the Holocaust, because that happened. In short: time-travel is bullshit!
Much later (it's dark out), the Fringers are still hard at it, with Astrid having found out that Peck doesn't have a cellphone, but a number registered to Arlette Turling is still active, meaning someone's paying the bill on it. "In the past twenty-four hours, the primary cell tower that's been handling the signal from Arlette's cellphone is a tower near Albany Street." Peter points out that MIT is near Albany Street. "Well, what's he doing at MIT? The professor said that she hadn't seen him for almost a year," says Olivia. And Astrid points out that just since Harvard hilariously let Walter's lab go untouched for 17 years while he was in a mental institution, maybe Peck still has a lab there.
So it appears that every FBI agent in New England has turned out for another raid, despite it appearing that they haven't even confirmed whether Peck is there or not. An agent tells Broyles that the lab registered to Peck when he was a professor there was lab 107, which has windows, so Broyles orders some men onto the rooftops. Walter's a little concerned about all the guns, and Peter asks Walter if he wouldn't rather go back home. Walter says no.
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By Daniel
While Peter goes off to talk to Broyles, Walter seeks out Olivia: "If we are correct and, for Peck, this is about bringing a dead loved one back to life, then Peck and I have something in common. Let me speak to him." Olivia seems unsure, and Walter acknowledges that the only way ensure Peck doesn't jump is to kill him, but Walter thinks he can convince him not to. Olivia takes him to go talk to Broyles.
Inside the lab, Peck's listening to Gary Numan's old band the Tubeway Army, an old minor hit from the '70s called (of course) "Are Friends Electric?" Meanwhile, he's -- oh, GOD this is gross -- inserting a piece of machinery under the skin on his torso. Is that his nipple?
The music is shut off, startling Peck, who turns to see Walter standing there. Walter raises his hands and says he's not a threat but an ambassador. "I know who you are. You're Dr. Walter Bishop. I've read you. New Frontiers in Genetic Hybridization," he says. Didn't the film version of that sweep the Oscars? Walter says he knows that if Peck wanted to, he could disappear from there in a second: "Please, trust me."
So Peck prepares a pot of tea while he and Walter chat about the laws of nature that aren't binding, and the places on earth where two plus two don't equal four. "You've figured out how to bend time. But you're only interested in traveling to the past. Your goal, your jump, is the 18th of May," says Walter. Peck's a little surprised that Walter knows about it, but confirms it.
He wanders over by one of the windows, and Walter warns him not to do that: "Don't stand there! There are snipers outside! Stay away from the window." Amusingly, outside, Broyles, listening in, turns and glowers and Olivia and Peter, who wisely don't say anything when Broyles growls that he hopes that Walter knows what he's doing.
In the lab, Peck asks what Walter wants, and Walter says his calculations show what Peck must already know: "An enormous amount of energy will be drained from wherever you arrive and a large number of people will be killed," he says. "But each jump back clears that slate," says Peck, and I'm really not sure I understand that it does, but WHATEVER, and Walter points out that at the very least, the victims around him when he makes his last jump back to pull his fiancée out of the car will be dead.
So Peck sits down and tells Walter a long story about how on the day of the crash, he and Arlette argued about going to a store to register for some wedding gifts, and he "hurt her feelings" and left, and then was drawn to a large red ball on the horizon that turned out to be a hot-air balloon, moored on the city's outskirts in a field, and he spent the whole day in the field looking at the balloon. In all fairness, that does sound more fun than spending the day registering for wedding gifts. Anyway, he had an epiphany there on how to physically apply his theories of time travel, and he was in that field the moment she was hit, so he knows that if was with her, he'd never have had that epiphany. "I'll jump back into that empty field, Walter. And I'll only drain the energy from the plant life. Energy will be dispersed, no one will die, and I will pull Arlette from that car and I will save her life." Yeah, but, again, no one will die except the ten-months-younger Alistair Peck, who will die, and thus never implement his time-travel theories, so he won't jump, so therefore won't die in the field, and this will implement his time-travel theories... anyway, you get the idea. I'm not sure I like the explanation that Peck isn't so much time-traveling as he's jumping back into versions of himself because of a) the memory thing and b) because of the constant modifications to his body to survive the jumps. Anyway. That's all I'll say about it, at least until the PARAGRAPH.
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By Daniel
Walter seems to be impressed by that idea, although he doesn't ask how it is that Peck can choose where he goes back to. At first I thought maybe that supported the idea that you can only jump back into yourself -- and then I remembered that Peck wasn't in the train car, until he suddenly was.
ANYWAY. Walter says he knows why Peck hasn't jumped back yet: "Because you don't know how to. You haven't been able to jump back any further than the train." He stands up and pulls out his hidden microphone, and unplugs it. Outside, Broyles gets static in his ear and yells at someone to get the signal back online.
In the lab, Walter, who is a geneticist who couldn't really understand Peck's formulae, tells him that he's approximating the time curvature with a seventh-order polynomial, when, for the distance Peck requires, it should be at least nine. "I've read you too," he says by way of explanation.
An agent tells Broyles that they can't get the signal back online, because Walter turned the radio off. Broyles gives Olivia one of those bowels-evacuating glares and then orders via the radio for a team to get up there, now.
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By Daniel
Inside, Walter says he's told Peck how to do it, and now he must not! You can imagine if Peck agrees with him. Walter says, "You'll never be able to live with the consequences," but he's not talking about people dying. And then he gives Peck the abridged version of the story of him taking Peter from another universe. "And since then, not a day has passed without me feeling the burden of that act," he says.
And while the tactical team storms the building, Walter sits down to tell Peck something he's never told another soul: "Until I took my son from the other side, I had never believed in God," he says, but now he figures that he betrayed God by taking Peter, and everything that's happened since has been God punishing him: "So now I'm looking for a sign of forgiveness. I've asked God for a sign of forgiveness. A specific one, a white tulip." Is that what he was talking about when he told Olivia he was waiting for something? You're not going to tell your son that he's from another universe unless you get a white tulip? Peck points out that tulips don't bloom this time of year, but Walter didn't specify "in spring" or anything. Besides, "he's God," points out Walter. "And if God can forgive me for my acts than maybe ... it's in the realm of possibility that my son, possibly, may be able to forgive me too." I'm not sure where Walter is getting that, since one of the central tenets of Christianity is that God will forgive absolutely everything that one is truly sorry for.
Peck sounds like Walter must have used to sound, as he leans forward and says, "God is science. God is polio and flu vaccines and MRI machines and artificial hearts. If you are a man of science (Dr. Jack Shephard?), then that's the only faith we need."
And we watch as the boots of the tac team make their way down the hallway, like JUST HOW FAR AWAY did they set up? Nice that they sent Walter in alone to talk to a guy who they think killed twelve people whilst being so far away from the suspect that it's taken them five minutes of running and THEY'RE NOT HERE YET.
Fortunately, this gives Walter time to give Peck a warning, that there will be repercussions if he pulls Arlette from that car: "You don't know how things will be changed by your actions, but they will." It's not our place to adjust the universe, Walter says, adding, "And you will never be able to look at her again without knowing that, just like every time I look at my son." And she'll never be able to look at Peck again without saying, "OH MY GOD WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR BODY" and running screaming from the room.
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By Daniel
Peck says Walter's asking him to just leave Arlette there, and Walter sadly nods. And FINALLY the tac team arrives, like maybe they stopped for a CIGARETTE they took so long, and Walter rushes to let them know that he's OK and to try to protect Peck, who takes advantage of the distraction to jump back in time again. Walter's yelling at the agents, "No, please! Gentlemen, please! Don't you see? We won't remember this! Don't you see? We won't remember anything!" So ... they should do what, exactly, Walter?
A cop gets out of his car to look at several dead bodies scattered around the sidewalk, and radios that he needs backup. The dispatch asks for his 20, and he's at 412 Inman St. Inside, Peck feverishly works on an equation on his blackboard.
And the Fringers are already trying to track down Peck, so this jump took him back only a couple of hours, since the Fringe team is just now discovering that Arlette Turling's cellphone signal is being handled by a tower near MIT. Broyles calls to tell them that Peck's back at his residence, which you can find easily if you look for the six corpses that are outside. "We have to take him down before he jumps again," says Broyles.
The rest of the Fringe team arrives as the tactical team sets up, not particularly worried about tipping Peck off this time. He's watching from a second-storey window in his apartment.
Then he sits down at his desk and takes out a piece of paper. He's very calm about putting on his glasses -- not in a hurry, despite the SWAT team trying to bust into his place. It's slow going for them, because he's piled all kinds of furniture behind the door. At least the tac team set up RIGHT OUTSIDE this time instead of three miles away. He scribbles something down on the paper, and puts it in an envelope that he marks "Carol Bryce -- MIT."
Meanwhile, snipers are getting into position on a nearby roof. I'm no SWAT team coordinator or anything, but I probably would have had those guys in place before I started battering the door down.
We can see Peck -- still writing his damn pen pal at MIT -- in the sight of one of the sharpshooters, who radios to Broyles that they've got the shot. "Take it," says Broyles. Walter looks a little distressed -- although in this version of the Choose Your Own Adventure, he didn't wind up having his heart-to-heart with Peck.
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By Daniel
Fortunately for Peck, he's got a mirror on his desk and he spots the laser site on his forehead. He hits the floor just in time, the bullet shattering the window but missing him. The tac team busts down the door, but he's already vibrating and shimmying and making his jump right back to that open field with the hot-air balloon, where he kills the grass in a large radius. I don't know about Boston, but where I come from, you leave a hot-air balloon unattended? You may as well just put a big "STEAL ME" sign on it.
He takes off running to the city, as we watch Arlette make her way to her car. She gets in, and he's right behind her. They smile at each other and make up -- we don't hear any actual dialogue, just music -- a moment before a truck comes barreling into the car on the driver's side (blink and you miss The Observer standing in a doorway down the street).
Over at MIT, Carol Bryce takes an envelope -- the one Peck wrote on just before he jumped back -- from her filing cabinet. She sits down at her desk. Inside the brown envelope is a white one addressed to Walter Bishop, on Yukon Street, with a Post-It note that reads, "Deliver to W. Bishop, March 18, 2010." So ... I guess he mailed that at some point as he was racing down the street to be with his fiancée before she died? Does that make sense? I mean, why would he just leave it on his desk before he jumped, since he knew Walter was part of the team investigating the deaths? Oh, not as dramatic. Oh, hold on, scratch that. He probably just had it on him when he died and since her name is on it, it was delivered to her. As usual, I'm an idiot.
A colleague strolls by and tells her that he hasn't seen her look at the letter for a while. "It's been almost a year since Alistair died," he says. Bryce says today's the day she's supposed to send it. Her moron colleague tells her to open it. Yeah, wait until the day you're supposed to deliver it, and then open it. He justifies this by saying, "Apparently, Alistair felt whatever it is, he could put it in your trust." If anything, that's a reason not to open it! Bryce points out that Peck wouldn't have sealed it if he wanted her to see what's inside. Well, that and it's ADDRESSED TO SOMEONE ELSE. She puts it back on her desk.
And we go back to where we started, with Walter working on the letter to Peter. He finishes it, puts it in an envelope and seals it up. He stands up from the desk, and then picks up a picture of him and his son. Well, his alternate-universe son, anyway. It's a recent shot, taken sometime after he got out of the mental institution. He studies it for a moment, and seems to get slightly emotional, and he sadly walks over to the fireplace and tosses the letter in.
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By Daniel
That's just before Peter strolls in, cheerfully telling his dad that he fixed Walter's turntable: "I'd tell you to keep it out of the lab this time, but I know you won't," he says, good-naturedly. Walter, sounding as sad as Eeyore, thanks his son. "I thought maybe you'd like some music to cheer you up. Walter, I know that you've been in a funk for the last couple of weeks. If there's something you want to talk to me about..." says Peter, but Walter does his best to brighten up and says a decision was weighing on him.
Peter, not sounding entirely convinced, says he's going to go hit the hay, and Walter looks at the fireplace, where the letter still hasn't burned up and is now flipped over so you can see the name PETER on it.
He hears the thump of mail hitting the floor in the front entryway, and he goes to pick them up. He finds the envelope, which used to say "Walter Bishop" but now says "W. Bishop," and he lingers on it. Opening it, he finds a simple sketch of a white tulip, rendered in just a few strokes. Peck's not a bad artist! Walter looks up, and quietly nods to himself.
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter, and he acknowledges that the time-travel explanation makes a hell of a lot more sense than Superman reversing the earth's rotation. Follow him on Twitter or email him at danieljdaniel[at]gmail.com.
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