At the end of 'Bound' Olivia falls asleep reading a book to Ella entitled "What's that Noise?", referring to the text in the killer program in 'The No-Brainer'.
The car dealership in 'The No-Brainer' has a sign for leasing a car for $718 a month. The flight that crashed in 'The Transformation' was VertusAir flight number 718.
FRINGE DIVISION CASE FILE #112-12709
FRINGE EVENT: A computer program that can kill people through brain liquefaction
CLASSIFIED CASE CONNECTION(S): N/A
AGENTS ASSIGNED: Dunham, Francis
SUPERVISING AGENT: Broyles
FILE ARCHIVED BY: Diletta Pizzicori
WITNESSES/CONTACTS: Paul Wiles (father), Cynthia Wiles (mother), Luke Dempsey (suspect), Brian Dempsey (suspect; deceased), Miriam Dempsey (mother)
LOCATION: Wiles residence, Springfield, MA; Brighton, MA
VICTIM(S): Gregory Wiles (deceased), Anton [redacted] (deceased), Ella Dunham, Mark Rosenthal
CASE REPORT SUMMARY:
Teenager Gregory Wiles was found dead at his home computer, with his brain matter completely liquefied and his computer's hard drive platters fused. Case was connected to the similar death of a general manager of a local auto dealership, who was found dead by an employee. Computer hard drive also had fused platters. Both computers determined to have downloaded a 657-megabyte file right before they crashed. Consultant Dr. Walter Bishop determined the file was a computer program that can kill people using a complex combination of visual and subsonic aural stimuli, designed to amplify the electrical impulses of the brain, trapping it in an endless loop.
- Project 1091 - Exploration 1 -
A terrible thought: sitting down to a daily routine that by day's end causes one's brain to melt! For most that terror is merely metaphorical -- but for these poor souls, quite real. Myelin sheathes dripping right off the axons! Neural lipids reduced to bacon grease! It reinforces my dedication to the lost art of flipping through a nicely bound tome. No threat of losing my mind there, unless I have to plow through more nonsense by that peanut-brain Chomsky.
One wonders what they saw in their final moments; sadly, that is knowledge acquired only in death. They came face to face with a real Ghost in the Machine -- a phrase hijacked by Ryle and Koestler for long enough. For what other phantoms might haunt the halls of the cyber realm? What will happen when the silicon pathways we take for ordinary gates of calculation spring to life and feel the same abandonment and pain that course through all sentient beings? That will be a day of reckoning I do not wish to see.
The computers are not alone. I, too, have a ghost in my machine. I envy his ability to walk through walls and take respite in the locked chambers of my memory. The last time I followed him and slipped through the sealed bolts, he left me trapped. I spent what felt like days wandering through the stacks, hearing only echoes of the world outside. I think it was when the orderly hosed me down with cold water that the bolts loosened and I repaired to my safe and familiar neural paths. We all get lost in thought, but rarely so literally. Maybe these victims were lucky, for their pain lasted only an instant. If the computer program had locked them into a continuous loop without cooking their melons, they might have remained trapped forever -- zombies enslaved by a ghost.
That is, of course, the motivating fear [...] insurmountable odds faced by those [...] -- but such will not be my fate if [...] Never! Behind every swinging door [...] into the breaches, dear friends, once [...] Our pattern-seeking minds, searching [...] but not to be found in a college textbook.
