Fifteen people trying to crack a code broadcast on shortwave radio wind up with retrograde amnesia, which you hope at least lets them start fresh with a new hobby that's actually interesting. But the Fringe team wants to figure out the source of the transmissions, not judge.
The broadcast -- a series of numbers that gives shellshocked Lost fans flashbacks -- is traced to a silver box, installed by a man who gives Alias fans flashbacks. Looking for help, the Fringe team turns to Markham, who gives them a book about pre-dinosaur humans who were wiped out by a cataclysm, and a chart in the book corresponds perfectly with the numbers being broadcast -- which are separate from the amnesia-causing attack by the guy from Alias.
The Fringers close in on him, only Fauxlivia’s way ahead of them, mainly because he’s a shapeshifter from the other side, and she takes him out -- out of his building, many stories up, and he plunges to his death before Fringe can learn anything from him. She’s running scared herself because her non-Olivia-like behavior is starting to raise some red flags among the people who know Olivia. Except Peter, who seems to remain oblivious.
It’s Astrid who cracks the case by determining the numbers are latitude and longitude locations -- which seems kinda too simple for a puzzle that seems to have stumped so many people who have gone before, but anyway… the closest location broadcast turns up a piece of the Alterverse doomsday machine, and Walter finally comes around to Peter’s insistence that they study the device. Following all the shenanigans, Fauxlivia’s latest instructions are: “Initiate Phase Two.”
A lighthouse on a rocky coastline illuminates the letters that inform us we are in Stockton Harbour, Maine. Inside the lighthouse, the keeper descends the spiral staircase to the radio room to answer a request for clearance.
"Tide is coming in strong. Pulling a fog bank from the east. It's close to shore, so watch yourself and take it slow," says the lighthouse keeper, kinda sounding like he forgot to add, "And keep your eyes peeled for Smokey." They back and forth for a moment (the lighthouse keeper has "hung a lantern" out for them), and then the keeper becomes engrossed in his laptop, chatting with someone about tuning to 6955 kHz.
Over to New York's Chinatown, where a couple of roommates are preparing for the evening, one by primping and talking about Mia bringing her "one-hundred percent hot" friend June, and the other by staring at a white board covered with rows and columns of numbers. "It's about to come on!" says the numbers guy, going to his laptop where he appears to be in the same chat server as the lighthouse guy. "Shen, are you seriously not coming?" whines his roommate, and Shen says that when he cracks this thing, people are gonna write books about him. Perhaps, but they're going to be the kind of books not read by Mia and June, guy. In the chat room, he asks if Recluse_09 is there.
She is, over in Merrimack, New Hampshire, and she's got a husband with a little baby who are going to make tea for her while she does her whathaveyou on the computer. "It's starting," she says, and she starts up a reel-to-reel recorder, and we hear beeping and someone speaking in a foreign language and a music box playing.
It quickly becomes apparent that the woman speaking is reciting numbers, which is confirmed when we watch Becky type them in. Did anyone who ever watched Lost not immediately get suspicious? Especially when the numbers we see entered on screen -- 15, 8, 42 -- are three of the six Lost numbers? Even Becky looks a little taken aback. Clearly she's thinking, "Oh, not the Lost numbers bullshit! This is a completely different show!" And then her head jerks back and she appears to be having a seizure or a migraine or a "mizure," which is also afflicting Shen back in Chinatown as well as the lighthouse keeper, who pitches forward, smacking his head on the desk.
Moments later he straightens up, while a ship is trying to make contact over the radio. Murray (the lighthouse keeper) just looks around, confused. Over in Chinatown, Shen's roommate has come back because he forgot his ID, and he comes in to see Shen standing staring at the whiteboard. "Shen? Are you OK?" Shen stares at him.
And over in Merrimack, Becky staggers out into the kitchen where her husband is dutifully doing the dishes. "Becky?" he says, concerned, when he sees how freaked out she looks. So she grabs a knife and brandishes it at him, telling him to stay back. "Who are you?" she yells. "It's me, Laird," says, well, "Laird," I suppose. We can hear baby Aaron crying. "Who am I?" says Becky, frightened.
After the opening credits, we join Peter and Fauxlivia, morning post-coitus, Peter delivering breakfast in bed, which Fauxlivia declares "better than room service," like anytime Fauxlivia wants room service to actually deliver the meal right into bed with her, I'm sure she's free to ask them. "It's just for being you and totally not your doppelganger from the other universe," says Peter, and he crawls into bed with her.
And then Peter gives her U2 tickets. Well, he doesn't give them to her so much as he acts like a cryptic weirdo so Olivia opens up the newspaper and they fall in her lap while she coos over them, and Peter figures they were "way overdue for a normal date," and maybe Peter can invent that time machine so he can take Olivia back at least 13 years to a time when U2 were at least interesting. And then she thanks him, and then Peter's cellphone rings, so he answers it to talk to Walternate while Fauxlivia looks conflicted. I'd tell her that the short answer is that she should at least wait until after the concert before she kills Peter.
Anyway, Walter's furious that Peter's been continuing to work on the doomsday project, and Peter is completely dismissive and outright LAUGHS at his dad, who finally says, "Well, fine. If you end up breaking the universe, this time it's on your head," which is something my dad always used to say to me too, and Walter angrily hangs up and starts mainlining Red Vines.
And then it's Fauxlivia's turn to have her cellphone ring. It's Broyles. "Guess that means we're doing the crossword in the car," says Peter, who I'm sure can look up answers on his cellphone just as easily in the car as he can in bed.
So they're over to New Hampshire, where Broyles fills them in: fifteen people up and down the eastern seaboard, all ham radio operators, all suffered from retrograde amnesia at the same time. Fauxlivia is ALREADY looking shifty. "Maybe their brains were erased by the magnetic winds from the solar storm," suggests Walter, but Peter shoots that down, since it happened four hours after sundown.
Anyway, they're at the Boomer household, where it took all about three minutes for her to forget everything about her life. "The DOD is concerned this could be a test run for a potential terror attack," says Broyles. After Peter looks up to see Laird kinda creepily holding baby Aaron, the Fringers knock on the door to go inside, where Laird tells Peter and Olivia that Becky was a moderator in a chat room were they listen to "numbers stations" and this show is cramming so much exposition in it's ridiculous but Laird and Peter don't have much time right now to outline exactly what the mysterious "numbers stations" are, and Laird doesn't even really know all that much about numbers stations anyway.
Walter discovers the reel-to-reel recorder, which touches off his memories of getting stoned and listening to Beatles records backwards for hidden messages, and by this point Broyles is starting to look more annoyed than shocked at Walter's constant references to recreational drug use. Peter comes in to say that the husband told them Becky recorded last night's broadcast on the reel-to-reel. "Listening to what they recorded last night could cause us to forget why we wanted to listen in the first place, Einstein," says Walter, and the mild sarcasm causes Peter to furrow his brow slightly, and even Broyles looks at him sideways. Undeterred, Peter says Laird told him that Becky spent her nights listening to numbers on random ham-radio stations. Well, maybe they should be giving seminars on keeping the excitement in a marriage, then. "She's trying to crack some code," explains Peter, and Broyles is all, "Numbers stations?" and Peter is surprised that he's heard of them. I'm kind of disappointed that Peter hasn't, and doesn't have some friend somewhere who knows everything about them. (Well, just wait.)
So it's back over to Massive Dynamic where Nina gives them a full-on lecture about how numbers stations are artificially generated voices reading streams of random numbers in all kinds of languages, and no one knows what they are or where they come from, and they were discovered 70 years ago. She helpfully plays a recording of one they picked up four years ago. "Some people think they may be covert communication between spies or drug traffickers. Problem is, no one has been able to find proof to support any theory at all. So at the moment, they remain unexplained," she says.
Fauxlivia points out that the number broadcasts have never caused amnesia before, and then Walter snidely says that given Peter's "recent fondness for dangerous activity," maybe he'd like to play the tape aloud to everyone. Peter just smirks and rolls his eyes, and then Walter announce he wants to examine the woman who "lost her mind," and he knows a way to analyze the tape without losing their memories. He says this pointedly at Peter, and someone could point out to Walter that it's not like Peter actually st
arted to play the recording or anything. He asks for directions to the child development centre because he needs something there. I know he owns the place, but given his history, maybe they should keep Walter in the dark as to exactly where the child development centre is. Don't need him experimenting on children's brain chemistry or anything.After Walter leaves, Nina suggests that Peter go with him, because yesterday Walter spent fifteen minutes in front of a utility closet, thinking it was an elevator. Like, so much for Walter's genius IQ. Peter goes, and Fauxlivia asks Nina if Astrid could take a look at the research: "She might pick up something that your code breakers missed."
Nina says sure -- Walter's ownership has some benefits -- and then she asks if the fabulous Bishop boys are OK. Olivia says they are, except for the fact that Walter doesn't agree with Peter trying to figure out Walternate's doomsday machine. "You know, you two go back a long way. Maybe you could talk to him," suggests Fauxlivia, leading to a completely contrived conversation where Fauxlivia reveals that she hasn't tried herself, and Nina's all, "that's not like you!" Fauxlivia covers by saying that "it's complicated" between the two of them, and she doesn't want to make it worse. She may as well have a flashing neon "I'm lying" sign on her forehead. Nina, who to my mind appears suspicious but not wanting to press the issue, agrees to talk to Walter.
Then Fauxlivia's phone rings, and she's off to Alford, Massachusetts with Broyles, to a communications tower where Homeland Security traced the broadcast. "When they tried to contact the tower employees, they didn't get a response," he explains to Fauxlivia as they approach the tower. The state police officer with them says the break-in happened around 10:30. "Security system was state of the art. Whoever did this was a pro, but there's something else," she says.
Broyles and Olivia enter the building at the base of the tower and make their way past a couple of dead employees, one with a bullet hole right in his forehead. And then they see it: a silver Nintendo GameCube, plugged into the tower. What's more, it seems to be floating.
After the commercial break, an agent has removed the front panel and is poking and prodding at the circuitry inside. Fauxlivia asks, "How the hell is it doing that?" and Broyles says it's not really floating, that there is some sort of magnetics inside. With that, the agent unplugs a connection and the GameCube clunks onto the shelf. Fauxlivia asks if this was the source of the number broadcast. "It's definitely wired to output a transmission," he says, and then he asks for the front panel and the fingerprint powder, and I'm kind of surprised it hasn't already been dusted, and he finds a big fingerprint. "It's impossible to do microelectronics with gloves on," says Broyles, who I would think would have a much higher threshold for things that are considered impossible, but anyway. He wants to get the machine to Walter.
Over at Harvard, Astrid is grouchily accepting several file boxes worth of Massive Dynamic's research on numbers stations, and Peter gets off the phone with Fauxlivia and lets everyone now that they think they found the device that uploaded last night's broadcast and they're analyzing the fingerprints they found at the radio tower. And then there's this confusing sequence of moos, only one of which comes from Gene, and I say confusing because I didn't watch this episode with super-special headphones or anything and so didn't understand Peter's consternation, but it turns out a couple of the moos came from some kind of farm sounds Speak 'N Spell, which Astrid is surprised to see is the property of Massive Dynamic. "It's not theft if you own the company," explains Walter, who says that he's found a way to listen to the tape of the numbers broadcast without losing what faculties he has left.
"The key is analog demodulation," says Walter, and I have no idea what happens , but it involves a "Jimi Hendrix wah-wah pedal" and the Speak N' Spell, and Walter is able to separate the numbers broadcast from the amnesia pulse. "So we still don't know where the numbers are coming from, but I suspect that the device that Agent Dunham found is the source of the pulse," says Walter. Astrid wants to know the key question: why? Peter's got a theory: "Because they cracked the code, or they came damn close to figuring out what numbers stations are. And somebody wants to keep that a secret," he says, and Walter seems to be over his snit and tells Peter he sounded "very Sherlock Holmes" there. "That would make you Watson, dear," Walter says to Astrid, who might consider switching, considering Walter can pronounce "Watson" correctly and didn't call her "Watchman" or "Jetson" or some such.
But the good mood can't last forever, because Peter notices that Walter has taken the soundboard he was using to run diagnostics on the doomsday weapon, and Walter tries to pretend he was using it to "down-convert the signal" whatever that means, but Peter catches him in a lie because the thing isn't even plugged in, so Walter just angrily says, "I was focused on solving the case at hand. I'm not concerned with preserving your wretched experiment," and he stomps off into his office, and Peter follows him so that they can argue some more, with Walter urging Peter to stop "playing with fire," and Peter sits down and calmly reminds Walter that when he touched the device on the other side, it came alive in his hands: "Like it was bonded directly to me. How can you expect me to ignore that?" Walter doesn't have any kind of answer for that, and at any rate their interminable argument is interrupted by Astrid coming in to tell them that Fauxlivia has a picture of the suspect based on his prints, so she's taking it to the Woomer house to show them, Becky having been released from the hospital.
Elsewhere, near another communications tower (although it's probably the same one just being reused for this scene) some dude skulks through the bushes, carrying another GameCube. When we finally his face, it's another J.J. Abrams flashback, since it's geeky Marshall from Alias, my favorite character from that show apart from Alias herself. He's got one blue eye and one brown eye, so that's new.
And it's a picture of Two-Colour-Eyes Marshall -- known here as "Joseph Feller -- that Fauxlivia is showing to Laird Woomer whilst explaining that his last known address was Milwaukee, but that was in 1997. Laird says he's never seen him before. Peter asks if he minds if they "poke around a little bit" and check out Becky's computer and her address book, and Laird says OK.
Meanwhile Feller is inside the communications tower and he's hooking up his new GameCube, which actually looks less complicated than my home entertainment system.
Over at the Woomers', Walter is talking to Becky. He gives her a card and tells her to read it and then do what it says. "'Stand up, then sit down,'" reads Becky, and she does so. Walter then reminds her that earlier he told her the names of three things: "Cat, horse, cotton candy," says Becky. Uh, things you see on the farm! Uh, things you can eat at the fair! Pass! Pass! She pulls her knitting from a nearby basket and says she doesn't remember doing it, even though she supposes it's for the baby. She gets emotional as she tells Walter that she doesn't recognize Aaron, or "that man who is out there." Walter tries to console her by telling her that "the human brain is a miracle" and calls it a storage unit for everything she has ever known, seen or felt. "It's all still in there, whether or not you're conscious of that," he says. This does seem to make Becky feel better.
And Peter's got a list of everybody that Becky talked to about the numbers stations. He points to the list and asks Fauxlivia if she recognizes anyone. "Ed Markham," Fauxlivia says, reading the name Peter's pointing to. She shrugs. "Bookstore owner, purveyor of rare manuscripts, your favorite ladies' man?" says Peter, surprised, so Fauxlivia gives a phoney
laugh and is all, "Oh, right. How could I forget, given that I am not just a replacement for Olivia from an alternate universe?" Peter leaves to give Markham a call, and then Walter wanders in, looking somewhat dazed. Fauxlivia asks if he's all right."I know what it's like, what this woman's going through. I lived it. To not recognize your life, it's awful," he says, and Fauxlivia rubs his arm and says she's sorry. It would be a little nicer if it weren't because she recently learned that the real Olivia is normally very solicitous about Walter's well-being.
Feller is still fiddling with his GameCube, soldering a transistor labeled "C-1120 Dziedzinie Efekt" onto a circuitboard that he puts back into the GameCube." Then he slides on a switch and the GameCube starts to rise up off the table.
And now we're up in the air with a small-engine plane flying through a storm. And we all know how well planes usually fare on this show. If you're on a plane on Fringe at any other time of the episode than the climax? You're gonna die. The pilot radios Baltimore to ask permission to divert to Richmond, but not much makes it from Baltimore through the static other than "Level 5 thunderstorm." The pilot fiddles with the radio, and eventually it's tuned to 6880 kHz, and we hear what sounds like church bells ringing, and then there's someone reciting numbers not in English, and the pilot is screaming and clutching his head while the plane rattles in the storm and all the other passengers are yelling.
And then in the Harvard lab, Astrid is watching the television news talk about the small-engine plane that went down just outside of Owings Mills, Maryland, and Astrid tells Walter that NTSB just released a statement. "It looks like the plane's radio was tuned into the same frequency as the second numbers broadcast," she says, like AS IF anything like that would be in a public statement released by the NTSB.
Walter says this was just what he was worried about: "A second attack, and now not only do we have twenty new amnesiacs, but six people died." He gets frustrated working on the GameCube, angry that he can't get a current. "It just doesn't make sense. Everything that I know about the physics of electricity says that this device shouldn't work at all," he says. Astrid has similar frustrations with the code: "It's immense. It's not even just one code. The numbers are a code. The time between the numbers are a code."
Her phone rings. It's Broyles, to tell them about the second break-in at an unmanned radio tower. "They found another cube, the one that must have downed the aircraft. They're sending it over right now," Astrid tells Walter after she gets off the phone. "Wonderful. Another cube I can't make any sense of," Walter whines, so Astrid puts on some Bach either to make him feel better or to at least drown out the miserable old bastard. The fugue does put a smile on his face though, and they get back to work.
Over at Markham's books, Markham is sitting in front of what appears to be the fallout from a book bomb having gone off in his shop. He appears to be in the W part of his fiction section, to H.G. Wells and Irvine Welsh. I always get a little kick out of seeing not just the same book but the same edition I have in a bookshelf on television or in a movie. In this case it's the thick orange-spined Glue by Irvine Welsh. Anyway, Markham's explaining that numbers stations were a hobby, and he banged his head on that wall for five years and gave up: "Stamp collecting, now there's a hobby with dividends," he says, and I don't know anything about stamp collecting so I don't know if that was an awful pun or not, but Fauxlivia doesn't have any time for any kind of jokes: "Well, all the people who listened to the last two number broadcasts have had their memories wiped. We're trying to identify who's behind it," she says. Markham can't believe it, and he agrees to tell Peter and Fauxlivia whatever he knows as long as they promise he'll be safe. Peter agrees.
Now Markham's probably in more immediate danger from the piles of books that are three times his height, but nobody points that out as Markham says the numbers stations are as old as dirt: "They say when Marconi invented the radio, the first thing he heard was the numbers, like they were floating around in space just waiting for someone to listen," he says.
Fauxlivia and Peter are amused by the notion that Marconi picked up a transmission before humans invented the technology to send one, but Markham's serious. He hauls out a book called The First People -- alternate credits reference alert! -- by Seamus Wiles, 1897. Sounds kinda like "Sam Weiss," no? He says it will tell them one theory as to where the numbers come from.
"By 'first people,' what are we talking about, Adam and Eve?" asks Peter, and Markham starts going on about the first people to evolve on the planet, predating the dinosaurs. "If you don't know anything, you can just say that," says Peter, but Markham's serious. Peter tries to pay him for the book, but Markham won't have it: "I don't want your money. I want protection. What if someone comes to erase my memories?" he asks, and Peter just rudely says he "should be so lucky" and then Peter and Fauxlivia peel on out of there, like so much for Markham's protection -- and it's worth pointing that it's Peter's notion that someone is trying to protect the code by wiping people's memories -- and at least Fauxlivia has the good manners to say "thanks" as they leave.
Over at the Harvard lab, Walter is unpacking the second GameCube and grumbling that he has "bookends" now, and then Nina shows up, completely turning Walter's mood around. "If I had known you were coming, I'd have baked a cake," he says, and Astrid solemnly informs Nina that Walter means it literally, and then Nina is awkwardly saying hello to Astrid, like they've just broken UP or something, and then she tells Walter that she needs to speak with him.
So they go outside and sit on a bench while Nina laments how "serious this campus has become," because I guess there aren't enough students cramming phone booths or swallowing goldfish for her to consider this a fun place anymore. Walter is actually smoking a joint now, surprising Nina, and then she takes a hit off it as the two of them bond over their prescriptions.
Then they start slamming today's generation, because all the students are "afraid," whilst they "had the courage to think against the grain of what we were told," and he kind of sounds like your grandfather, if your grandfather's complaints about young people today centre around them not smoking enough drugs and having too much respect for authority.
The smell of bullshit is especially thick as Walter says, "We let curiosity be our guide," so Nina asks why he's stopping Peter from following his. Walter grouchily says that what Peter is doing is different: "He's bent on pursuing something despite the grave risks it poses to his well-being," he says, and Nina points out that you can't create a vaccine without working with the virus. "No, but I have experienced what this kind of hubris can do," says Walter, and maybe somebody -- Nina, perhaps -- should remind him that SHE LOST AN ARM due to the "hubris" that he's regretting, but Nina herself doesn't say it. She just points out that Walter didn't listen to anyone's warnings, including her own: "You insisted on finding a way to cross over. Peter wouldn't be here now if you hadn't," she says, adding that Peter will continue to investigate whether Walter likes it or not, which he thinks will play right into Walternate's hands: "He's already built as much of the machine as he can. He gave the blueprints to Peter and asked him to complete it. Even though ... this ... it could kill him," says Walter, showing her the blueprint. She says "It's a drawing, not destiny" and tries telling Walter that with stakes this high, Peter needs Walter's guidance more than anything. "One of the things I have most admired about you is your optimism. Don't become a fatalist now," she
says, without acknowledging that much of that can be attributed to recreational drug use. Walter still looks unsure.Elsewhere, Fauxlivia's driving while Peter sums up the book for her: "Something happened, some sort of cataclysm that so completely decimated the first people, they were just wiped out of the historical record," he says. "So how did Seamus Wiles know about them?" asks Olivia. But there's more: "They were apparently very technologically advanced. They discovered the vacuum," he says, and Fauxlivia's all, "Oh, the vacuum cleaner?" and Peter says, "No, the vacuum as in 'the source of all creation and destruction.'" He proclaims the book "useless," then finds a chart at the back, and he asks Fauxlivia what the numbers on the first broadcast were. She asks why: "Well, if you were to believe the book, the first people measured time in months that had wildly different numbers of days in them. But humour me. What were the numbers?" he asks again, and Fauxlivia stumbles and the music swells as she rattles off some numbers that we're being led to believe will turn out to have just been Fauxlivia talking out of her ass as she tries not to reveal that she doesn't have Olivia's photographic memory. But it's all misdirection, as Peter starts reciting the numbers with her, because the numbers from the first broadcast correspond exactly with the numbers in the book. "Never thought I'd say this, but I think Markham's right. Somehow, the number stations are connected to these first people. What the hell does that mean?" I don't know what it means, but I do think it's mean of Peter to constantly slam Markham who is a) always willing to help and b) ALWAYS right, which is why Peter keeps coming back.
Back at the lab, Astrid's reading The First People now and declaring it "absurd," which sets Walter off on a tirade about how "arrogant" we are to assume that we're the first Homo sapiens to walk the earth, and I love how people use the word "arrogant" to describe people who don't believe something until there's, you know, PROOF, which you'd think Walter, being a scientist, would appreciate (notwithstanding his whole white tulip nonsense). "History is full of extinction events: climate change, meteorites, Atlantis," he says, at which point Astrid pleads for help from Peter.
"I don't know what I believe yet. All I know is that the numbers in their calendar correspond with the numbers of the first broadcast. That can't just be a coincidence," says Peter. Uh, because the people making the broadcast got the numbers from the book too? Isn't that the most likely explanation? I mean, I realize this is Fringe and everything, but you'd think THAT would be up for discussion here, that the book in real life would be more likely proof that the first people theory is nonsense, rather than lend credence to it.
Astrid reads out a passage: "'They were a people of great technological prowess who made the ultimate discovery. A mechanism known to them as the vacuum, containing at once both the power to create and destroy.'" Walter calls the vacuum "a wonderful name" and that it verifies some of his theories. Astrid's all, "What theories? Create and destroy what?" and Walter says, "Well, everything. Many religions speak of such a power. And science, the big bang, and its counterpart, the big crunch. The universe expanding and contracting and expanding, an endless cycle of creation and destruction." Which is all well and good, but the fact you've got someone else talking about the same nonsense as you do isn't VERIFICATION, for god's sake. Walter might as well theorize that a man can fly and then pick up a Superman comic book and be all, "Holy shit! This verifies some of my theories!"
Thank god for Astrid, who can't roll her eyes fast enough. But Peter continues to run with it, figuring that the first people created the mechanism and then somehow translated into a code. "And now someone is wiping people's memories to keep the code a secret?" asks Astrid, skeptically, but Walter is all, "Not so surprising! It's the key to the universe! It's a secret worth keeping." No, no. Up up down down left right left right A B select start, that's a secret worth keeping. This is just gibberish.
And then Fauxlivia comes in, and because she now knows she needs to be super concerned about how Walter's doing, she's brought him some malassadas, which I don't think I've ever even heard of but Walter goes nuts for them. She asks if there's anything new in the book, and Astrid says, "I'm sure the numbers hold the answers. But beyond that, nothing tangible."
And then Peter finds something: the transistor that we saw Feller solder, and Peter can tell it's Polish, and military grade, and there are only a couple of places that are licensed to sell things like this, and you have to have a verified address to buy one. Fauxlivia takes in all this information impassively, and when Walter borrows the First People book to take with him to the crapper, grossing out Astrid in particular, Fauxlivia excuses herself to update Broyles. She looks pissed.
And then she actually leaves rubber driving out of there. I guess part of her cover story is that none of the phones at Harvard were working?
Back at the lab, Astrid's working on the code, and Walter brings her an avocado, cucumber and cheese sandwich (with potato chips for the crunch), which is what he developed when the CIA asked him for the best sandwich for clarity of thought. Is it invalid since he wound up in a mental hospital? Astrid's frustrated because she can't see the pattern in the numbers. Walter says, "To break the code, you would have to think like they did, and they lived millions and millions of years ago," adding that they think so differently that their concept of time is all bunged up, as evidenced by one of their months having nine days. And that's the trigger Astrid needs to go all Beautiful Mind and start writing numbers down while Walter reads out the numbers in the first people's calendar to her. She thinks that what they're missing is the cipher matrix, "our decoder ring." Walter continues to rattle off numbers, but there are only so many ways you can make bingo exciting, so we're going to check in on Fauxlivia, who is knocking on an apartment door that is answered by -- naturally -- Feller. "We got a problem," she says. He lets her in to his sleek, ultra-modern open-concept apartment. "The Secretary said we weren't supposed to meet," he says, and Fauxlivia says the Secretary can't see every turn of events. She tells him Fringe found the Polish transistor and are tracking him: "You were sloppy. You've jeopardized the mission," she says, and he gets a bag together -- packing to leave? -- and says he's got to upload another post tomorrow. Interestingly, Fauxlivia tells him he's done enough: "We've got their attention. There's no need to hurt any more innocent people," but Feller's all "all's fair in love and war," which is apparently not a phrase they have on the other side but one that he's learned over here. "If they were in our shoes, they would do exactly what we're doing," he says. We know that Fauxlivia's starting to realize that's not the case, but her phone rings, so she silences Feller with her hand. It's Broyles, giving her an address for Feller and telling her they're on their way with backup." After she hangs up, she tells Feller that they're coming. "Where should I go? Do you have any information on my mission?" he says. "Yeah, I do," says Fauxlivia, calmly. So you know he's dead. This is why I try to avoid the -episode previews so that I don't know that what comes , as Broyles and Peter arrive, noticing Olivia's car already there, is Feller flying out the window and plunge to his death (preceded by a gunshot that made everyone look up). The look on Broyles' face as Feller cracks the pavement right to him kills me. It's less surprise and more disgusted/pissed. Mercury spatters out of Feller's nose and spreads in a reflective pool under his head. "It's a shapeshifter," he says.
Peter spots Fau
xlivia looking out the window, and by the time he gets upstairs and she's coming out of the apartment, she's still seemingly freaked out to require a hug from Peter, which I don't think you need to be a particularly longtime viewer to know that that's not exactly an Olivia trademark, but any excuse for Peter to press his stubbly body up against his girlfriend while at work, I guess. "He came at me, I had no choice," sobs Fauxlivia, and Peter gets to be the comforting hero, which he doesn't question at all.Back at the Harvard lab, Astrid's still flummoxed by the numbers. Walter asks if she's had any breakthroughs, and she hasn't, but she thinks maybe she should add up all the numbers. Walter encourages her to keep at it, adding, "And I wouldn't go in the bathroom, dear." He must be such a joy to work with. Wait a minute, he's been in the bathroom THIS WHOLE TIME? Good grief, even I don't take that long, and that's where we keep our Onion books!
Anyway, Astrid is about to erase some numbers, maybe to start again, when all of a sudden she notices the sun shining in through a window, through the transparent board, projecting the numbers onto a handy nearby globe. "Huh," she says.
Back over at the Feller splatter site, Peter stops some agents from zipping the shapeshifter up into a bodybag, saying he needs to look at the body.
Grabbing a pair of gloves, he tells Broyles and Fauxlivia that he's figured out why Walter couldn't make head nor tail of the GameCube: "It must have come from the other side," he says, and Broyles makes the leap to deducing that Walternate must know what the numbers mean and is the one protecting them. Peter rolls the body up enough so he can stick his hand into Feller's back, and Olivia has to hide her glee when Peter, disappointed, pulls out a data storage unit that's too mangled to be of any use to them. So when Astrid calls immediately after that to tell Fauxlivia she thinks she cracked the code, I'm kind of surprised Fauxlivia didn't bust out an "Oh, godDAMNit" at her.
Back at the Harvard lab, Astrid explains that the numbers stations are a co-ordinate system, and shows the group that the numbers indicate location via latitude and longitude. "Thirty-five degrees and 40 minutes south by 58 degrees and 40 minutes west, that's just outside Buenos Aires, Argentina," she says, adding that all the numbers indicate specific locations on a globe, in Ethiopia, Spain and China.
Peter asks what's at the end of the points, and Astrid says it's all random stuff like a farmhouse, swimming pool, but Walter points out that if the message is millions of years old, then what they're looking for is likely something buried underground. No one here points out what's been pointed out on message boards, that if the message is millions of years old, then some of those points would likely now be ocean. I'll admit to being a little fuzzy on how latitude and longitude work, but I'm curious to know how Astrid knew where to start in each sequence of numbers to pinpoint various locations, especially since numbers stations have been broadcast since the time of the first peoples, right? Does each broadcast repeat all the numbers, every time? If so, why would people need to keep tuning in? And finally, and most problematic for me, with all the people tuning in to figure out the code, you're telling me no one thought to try latitude and longitude before? Isn't that a little like the Fringe team investigating a message that has stymied a bunch of armchair codebreakers who can't make head nor tail of "Ethay oomsdayday eviceday isay uriedbay undergrounday"?
OK, I'll stop now. This must be why I fell asleep at this part of the episode, to prevent my head from exploding from the medieval torture that is trying to patch the holes in this plot.
Fauxlivia asks how many locations there are. Astrid says she hasn't finished plugging in all the numbers, but so far there are twenty-two, and Peter asks where the closest one is. I'd probably have asked, "Who's up for Buenos Aires!
Oh, Jersey City. Booooo! There's a massive dig site underway as Peter strolls up with some coffee for Fauxlivia, asking what he missed, and he hasn't missed anything but a buried football, and then there is some allegedly cute banter that I will ignore, and then Fauxlivia looks over at Walter anxiously watching the dig and asks, "What if he's right?" and Peter's all, "Right about what?" Duh, about whether to build the doomsday device. "What if it does mean the destruction of one universe or the other?" asks Fauxlivia. Peter considers his answer before replying that they don't know that yet, WHICH IS WHY SHE SAID 'WHAT IF,' PETER. "If you knew that only one of our worlds could survive and it was up to you, and you alone, to defend your side, you'd have no choice, right? I mean, you would have to do what you had to do. No matter the cost to protect our world," says Fauxlivia, haltingly. Peter says some stuff about billions of innocent people being over there, just like here, people with jobs, families, lives. Yeah, people like Peter's MOM, which I'd think would be relevant, but he doesn't mention her. "Whatever my part in all of this is, I got to believe there's another way. There's always hope, right?" Fauxlivia looks at him for a while until one of the diggers shots that they've got something.
Peter, Fauxlivia and Walter rush to the edge of the big dig as the crane hauls up what appears to be a huge baked potato, dripping wet.
Back at Harvard, Astrid is still plotting the co-ordinates, placing flags on a map of the world for all the locations. She's about to stick another one in on the eastern seaboard of the U.S. when she stops and says, "Oh my."
She calls Olivia, who's watching as workers brush away the dirt encrusted the top of some sort of hard, flat surface, with a couple of strange symbols etched into the top.
"I just identified the last coordinates," Astrid tells her: Milton, Mass., the house where the first piece of Walternate's machine was buried. "Do you think it's possible that these locations are all part of the machine, that Walternate's device is the vacuum described in the First People book?" she asks, and Fauxlivia stares as the what turns out to be the lid of a large -- I want to say stone? -- box is removed, revealing more funky doomsday machinery underneath. "I think they're one and the same," she says.
She gets off the phone and tells the Bishops that Astrid's finished figuring out the code: there are thirty-seven other locations. "In that case, it seems we have work to do. We have to recover the pieces, assemble it, and figure out how it works," says Walter briskly, surprising Peter. "Creation and destruction. I suppose we'll have to hope for the former," he adds, and everyone smiles, not really meaning it.
Time for a visit to the crazy typewriter room for Fauxlivia. She rolls a fresh sheet in the paper and types "THEY'VE LOCATED THE PIECES OF THE DEVICE," and the answer "WELL DONE" comes back, and then "INITIATE PHASE TWO." And since no one is around to see her, Fauxlivia is free to make all the evil expressions she likes.
And then, to show that we're taking a quick jaunt into the other universe, the Statue of Liberty turns to copper right before our eyes. Olivia's getting out of the shower, answering her phone - it's geeky alt-Brandon, letting her know that the Secretary has "decided postpone today's procedure." She asks when they want her to come in. "It may not be necessary. We'll let you know," he says, in a tone of voice that clearly says, "Don't hold your breath."
Fortunately, Visions of Peter is there to explain it for her: "Whatever they needed from you, they have it now. It's not safe for you here anymore, Olivia. You have to go home," he says.
Daniel is a writer in Newfoundland with a wife and a daughter. He thinks the people in the other universe would agree that Defenestration is the Cure's best album. Follow him on Twitter (@DanMacEachern) or email him at danieljdaniel[at]gmail.com.