- The latest broadcast on a numbers station transmits amnesia to its listeners. Walter clashes with Peter over Peter's work on the machine from alternate Earth.
- When several persons are affected with amnesia by a broadcast, the Fringe Division is assigned to investigate the case. Soon they locate the station that broadcast the signal and Dr. Bishop brings a mysterious box they found to his laboratory to study it. Peter goes to a library with Olivia and their friend Edward Markham gives a rare book about "The First People" from an advanced civilization to them. They learn that the broadcast numbers are the same they find in the book. Meanwhile Walter is upset with the Peter that is studying the Doomsday Machine. When Astrid deciphers the code, they discovers that they are coordinates. What is the secret of the mysterious coordinates?—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- Back "over here," the Fringe Division investigates a bizarre phenomenon when fifteen people up and down the Eastern Seaboard all suffer retrograde amnesia from listening to their shortwave radios on the same frequency. Much to Walter's dismay, Peter presses on with piecing together the mass destruction device. Just as alternate Olivia and Peter's chemistry deepens, the anticipation of Olivia's return escalates.—Fox Publicity
- Stockton Harbor, Maine
A boat radios a lighthouse. The keeper gives them a bearing. He emails someone that "it's starting" and to tune to a specific frequency.
Chinatown, New York
A man looks at a board full of numbers, excited that he might crack something. He's going to tune in, too.
Merrimack County, New Hampshire
A mother types that she's listening, too. She tells her husband it's starting and records her radio. She writes down a series of numbers that come across the air.
Suddenly, her head hurts. We see the other listeners gripping their heads and convulsing, too. The lighthouse keeper passes out.
He's awakened by a boat radioing in.
In Chinatown, the man's friend comes home. In New Hampshire, the mother, Becky, doesn't recognize her husband. She doesn't know who she is.
(roll credits)
Peter brings Faux-Olivia breakfast in bed. He shows her two tickets to U2. She tells him it's romantic.
Walter calls, upset to find that Peter was working on the device from the other side. "If you end up breaking the universe, this time it's on your head," Walter says.
Broyles calls Olivia.
The Fringies hit the scene. Fifteen people up and down the eastern sea board suffered amnesia at 10:45 p.m., they were all using short wave radios.
They're in New Hampshire.
They talk to Becky's husband Laird. She moderated a chat room that listened to number stations. She recorded the broadcast.
Broyles knows about number stations.
So does Nina, who briefs them on it. The department of defense hired Massive Dynamic to investigate but they found nothing. They're automated voices reciting numbers. Walter wants something form the child development floor, Nina suggests Peter go with him.
After they leave, Nina asks Olivia if the Bishops are Ok. She tells Nina about Walter's objection to Peter working on Walternate's machine. She asks Nina to talk to him, which Nina finds odd because Olivia is usually more direct with Walter.
Olivia gets a call
Alford, Mass.
At a radio tower, they learn there was a break in last night around 10:30. Two employees were killed. They find a box hardwired into the system, floating. They find a print on it.
Walter has come up with a way to listen to the broadcast without being affected, using the children's toy that makes animal sounds. He plans to modify the sounds, using a wa-wa pedal. There are two sound waves from the broadcast -- the numbers and a pulse.
Peter thinks it was done because the people listening cracked the code.
Peter finds that Walter meddled with his experiment. Walter wants him to leave it alone.
Astrid reports they have a suspect from the fingerprints and Becky is back home.
Cut to a man carrying a box like the one they found up to another radio tower.
Olivia has this photo. He's Joseph Feller. Laird doesn't recognize him. Feller sets up the box at a radio tower.
Walter meets with Becky, giving her a card with simple directions to follow. Her short-term memory is fine, but she can't recognize her own child. He reassures her.
Peter shows Olivia a list of names from Becky's chat room and is surprised when she doesn't recognize Ed Markham, the bookstore owner.
Feller assembles the box and activates it.
A small airplane flies through bad weather and request permission to divert. The transmission doesn't come through clearly so the pilot adjust the frequency and comes on the number station.
After the plane crash, in which six people died, they found the station tuned to the frequency.
Walter is stymied by device. Broyles calls with news of another radio tower break-in. Astrid puts on some Bach to calm Walter.
Olivia and Peter meet with Markham, who says the number stations go back to before the invention of radio. He gives them an old book called "The First People."
In the lab, Walter examines the second cube. Nina comes to talk to him. He sparks up with her on a park bench. She asks him why she doesn't want Peter to examine the machine, pointing out that Walter couldn't be stopped either. He worries it'll kill Peter. She says Peter needs his help.
Peter reads from the book and finds the numbers correspond to an early calendar in the book.
Back at the lab, Astrid reads from the book, about the first people discovering the vacuum, kind of like the Big Bang that creates and destroys. Olivia arrives with treats for Walter.
Peter examines the cube and sees a transistor part has been replaced. It's Polish, military-grade and would have to be registered.
Olivia excuses herself, saying she's going to talk to Broyles.
Astrid looks at the numbers. Walter tells her to think as they did, they had nine days in a month. She goes back to the book and writes out the numbers in each month. She looks for a cipher matrix: a decoder ring.
Olivia knocks on an apartment door. Joseph Feller answers. She tells him they found the Polish transistor, he was sloppy. He's supposed to upload another pulse tomorrow. She says he's hurt enough people. Broyles calls with Feller's address. As she stands in Feller's living room, she tells Broyles she's on the way. Feller asks her what he should do.
Cut to Broyles and Peter arriving outside to the sound of gunshots and Feller flying out the window. He hits the ground and bleeds mercury. Upstairs, she tells Peter that Feller came at her and she had no choice.
In the lab, Astrid notices the shadows cast by the numbers from the clear wipe board onto a globe.
Peter wants to examine Feller. Peter has realized that the numbers come from the other side. Peter grabs Feller's spinal data storage unit, but it's destroyed. Astrid calls, saying she cracked the code.
Back at the lab she explains that they're latitude and longitude. The numbers correspond to places in Spain, Ethiopia, China and Buenos Aires. Walter thinks they're looking for something buried. There are 22 locations so far. They go to the closest one in Jersey City.
Waiting by the dig site, Peter brings Olivia coffee, going back to get her order right.
Olivia asks Peter if maybe Walter is right about the device leading to the destruction of a universe. She asks him if he'd do whatever it took to protect his side if he knew only one side could survive. He tells her that given the billions of people on the other side, he has to believe there's another way. He tells her there's always hope.
The excavation turns up something. It's a giant circular piece of stone.
Back in the lab, Astrid sees something in the location of the sites. She calls Olivia to tell her that one of the coordinates is for the house where the piece of Walternate's machine was buried.
She wonders if the coordinates are all pieces of the machine and if Walternate's machine is the vacuum described in the first people book. Watching the machine piece come out of the ground Olivia agrees that's exactly what it is. There are 37 more locations. Walter is suddenly fired up.
He wants to find the pieces, assemble it and figure out how it works.
Olivia sits at the typewriter to the other side. "They've located the pieces of the device," she types.
She gets back: "Well done. Initiate Phase Two."
On the other side, Olivia gets a call from Brandon in the lab, canceling her tank dunk for the day. Peter the hallucination tells her she has to get out of there and she must know why they canceled the last test, that they got whatever they needed from her. "You have to go home," he says.
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