FRINGE DIVISION CASE FILE #120-51209
FRINGE EVENT: Alternate universe breach
CLASSIFIED CASE CONNECTION(S): David Robert Jones/ZFT/Pattern cases
AGENTS ASSIGNED: Dunham, Francis
SUPERVISING AGENT: Broyles
FILE ARCHIVED BY: Lynn Brown, Rob Harlow Jr.
WITNESSES/CONTACTS: Anonymous eyewitnesses in NYC and Providence
LOCATION: NYC; Providence, RI
VICTIM(S): John Doe (soccer player), John Doe (ZFT security), Nina Sharp
CASE REPORT SUMMARY:
David Robert Jones came out of hiding to shoot Nina Sharp at her residence. He stole the energy cell Dr. Bell had placed in her robotic arm—the component needed for Jones to cross to the alternate universe. Jones conducted two experiments looking for a "soft spot" to tear into the other universe. The first was in New York City with a tractor-trailer that crossed over from the other side. Agent Francis determined that the prints from the deceased driver were not on file, the truck wasn't registered in New York or anywhere else, and the VIN and serial part numbers didn't exist. The second occurred in Providence on a soccer field and claimed the life of an innocent player. Jones determined Reiden Lake, New York, was the best place to set up his teleporter but was confronted by agents, including Agent Dunham. Dr. Bishop and Peter Bishop arrived with a machine that turned off the teleporter. Interrupted half-way through crossing over, Jones's upper-left half of his torso, along with half of his skull, disintegrated. Agent Broyles was told to cease and desist the investigation into Dr. Bell.
- Project 617 - Exploration 9 -
... all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice...
But I resisted the translation. There was one chapter I simply could not let go.
I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. ... I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.
The patch worked. But if the walls continue to crumble, anomalies will occur with increasing frequency, the ripples spreading ever wider. Is there any chance we can heal the breach in time?
Keeping time, time, time
As he knells, knells, knells
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells -
Of the bells, bells, bells -
It was Belly all along. He always knew how to prod the deepest thoughts from my brane. I remember that lunatic perched a bucket of icy water over the lab door, so I'd douse myself upon returning from the coffee shop. I didn't mind the water so much as the knot in my head from the pain crashing down. But the clashing rhythms of shivering body and throbbing head (13 shivers to every 8 throbs, 21 to every 13) focused my attention on out-of-phase frequencies. Kenneth, what is the frequency? Simply the limit of an infinite sequence.
I finally put the pieces together, but the answer should have been obvious all along. S. S. Kresge would have understood. After all, it was he who specified the precise dimensions of the laboratory. All I had to do was follow the golden spiral to its center, and there it was -- buried, right where the tank used to be.
A hole in the fabric of the universe, and another in my heart. Now I must return to it. No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve: ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man.
NINA SHARP: "William Bell is not in this world."
NINA: "Dr. Bell once posited that our world has soft spots, places where the fundamental constants of nature - the speed of light, gravity, the mass of a proton, for example - have begun to decay. As a result, in these particular areas the membrane between the realities is thinner, almost porous."