The Ghost Network

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Fringe
Season 1, Episode 3
Air date	September 23, 2008
Written by	David H. Goodman Roberto Orci
Directed by	Alex Graves
Portal:Episodes
← previous The Same Old Story	next → The Arrival
Cast | Transcript

The Ghost Network is the third episode of the first season of Fringe. The episode first aired on September 23, 2008. Dead bodies of commuters are frozen inside a bus like insects in amber. Investigation leads to a man who thinks he is being spoken to by the devil, but who is actually sensing transmissions in his head because of his participation in an experiment conducted years earlier by Dr. Bishop.

Contents 1 Synopsis 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Story 2 Regular cast 3 Next Episode Clue 4 Trivia 4.1 General 4.2 Music 4.3 Observer Sighting 4.4 Cypher

[edit] Synopsis

[edit] Introduction

At St. Anne's Cathedral, Boston. A man, Roy McComb, sits in a confessional. He is deeply troubled and speaks in a trembling voice. Roy tells the priest that the devil is speaking to him, sending him visions of horrible events, and his latest vision is about something terrible happening on a bus.

On a Boston transit bus, a man in a business suit, Matthew Ziegler, gets on the bus and blends in with the other passengers. Moments later, he puts on a gasmask and releases a canister filled with smoke. While the other riders panic, Ziegler calmly grabs a backpack belonging to a female passenger. The bus comes to a screeching halt as passengers choke on the white smoke filling the cabin. Ziegler steps off the bus and gets into a waiting car, as behind him everyone on the bus seems to freeze in place...

Roy, unable to finish his confession, runs out of the church, dropping a crumpled drawing of his last vision: a bus full of people, choking and dying as they try to escape.

[edit] Story

An official funeral is in progress at Mount Briar Cemetery for John Scott, Olivia Dunham's former partner and secret lover. There is discomfort on the part of some of the attendees because Scott died while apparently committing a crime. The honor guard hands a folded American flag to John's mother, who stares directly at Olivia. After the funeral, Olivia tells Charlie that Scott's mother was staring at her as if she blamed her for John's death. As Olivia and Charlie are talking, Special Agent Phillip Broyles of DHS arrives and asks Olivia to come with him.

Walter Bishop and Peter Bishop are at a roadside dinner for breakfast. It seems like a normal moment between father and son until Walter begins to mix his own prescription drug cocktail - just a little something he whipped up in his lab to counteract the effects of the time spent in the asylum. Peter notices a man at the counter who has been following him and goes over to confront him. The man tells Peter he was supposed to check in when he got back in town. Peter takes a memory chip from the man's camera and warns him to stay away. When Peter returns to the table, an unconcerned Walter announces that he has decided he would like the pancakes. Almost as an afterthought he remembers the Olivia called about something happening on a bus.

Broyles leads the team to the bus, which sits in a blocked off tunnel. The team sees the bus passengers suspended in a horrific death tableau, frozen within a misty translucent substance. Walter deduces that whatever suffocated them must have been released as a gas and then instantly solidified, encasing all of the passengers.

In what looks like a crypt, Ziegler and another associate dump out the contents of the backpack. They are searching for something, but they cannot find it. The associate takes out a strange satellite phone and speaks in Latin. Meanwhile, at his workplace, Roy has another vision. This time he draws a woman who appears to have stigmata - blood dripping from her hands.

In the lab, Walter tries to identify the substance from the bus, and Peter tries to help. To Peter's annoyance, the only thing Walter wants is for Peter to play the piano. At a facility set up to examine the bus, Olivia compares a video of the passengers taken by one of the victims and realizes that a backpack belonging to a woman is missing. The woman is identified as an undercover DEA Agent, Evelina Mendoza. Broyles and Olivia meet with DEA Agent Grant Davidson, who says Agent Mendoza had stumbled on something involving "The Pattern," but what it was he doesn't know. Davidson then asks to identify the body. Olivia accompanies him to the morgue. Having just lost her own partner, she is sensitive to what Davidson is going through and gives him a moment alone with the body.

Back at the laboratory, Walter explains that the solid smoke was a silicon-based aerosol that solidifies into a solid when it comes in contact with the nitrogen in the atmosphere. Peter adds that Massive Dynamic manufactures the chemicals used in the solid smoke. But before Olivia can follow this lead, Charlie Francis summons her to Roy's apartment; telling her she will want to see what is there.

Roy's apartment. Charlie shows Olivia a room full of handmade models, including Flight 627, and drawings of Pattern events, all of them gruesome and disturbing. Each of the drawings is dated before its incident took place. It seems that Roy is seeing the future.

Roy sits in an interrogation room. Roy reluctantly explains that he gets visions in his head, and the only way to get them out is to draw or recreate them. This has been happening for nine months - about the same time that Broyles says the government became aware of the Pattern. Walter postulates that Roy might be receiving these thoughts from the people planning the attacks. he must be psychic. Moreover, Roy might not have any control over this ability, and the people sending the messages may not even know that Roy is receiving them. To prove his theory Walter asks to examine Roy.

Walter and Peter watch as Roy is placed in an MRI. As the machine whirs to life, Roy begins to scream in pain as ripples shaped like blood vessels form across his skin and face. The high-powered magnets of the machine are pulling something out of Roy's skin.

Realizing that Roy must have metal in his blood, Walter returns to his old files and discovers that Roy was n test subject. Walter was working on a military project to directly send messages into people's brains. To achieve this, Walter injected his subjects with an organo-iridium compound that would act as a receiver for messages sent over a secret radio frequency known as "the ghost network."

Walter hypothesizes that Roy is receiving transmissions sent by a group that has discovered and activated the ghost network. The messages are going into Roy's sensory cortex, which explains why Roy is seeing and feeling the messages instead of hearing them. In order for Roy to "hear" the transmissions, Walter will need to shift the iridium compound to Roy's auditory cortex, a minor surgery. Minor brain surgery, Peter points out.

Peter and Olivia recover a neural stimulator that Walter had hidden years ago in the walls of the Bishops' old house. Walter attaches the device to Roy's head. Then Peter shows Roy a series of images to determine where Roy is picking up the ghost signal. As Roy responds, Walter uses the neural-stimulator to shift the signal around Roy's brain. Roy first sees, then tastes, then smells the images until he begins to hear voices. But Roy doesn't understand; it sounds like gibberish. As Roy repeats the sounds he is hearing, Astrid Farnsworth realizes he is speaking Latin and translates for the group.

An exchange is being set up. The parties are going to meet at South Station bus terminal in an hour. The voice goes on to say that what they wanted "was on her the whole time."

Olivia looks at Roy's last drawing, the women with stigmata, and realizes that what the enemy wanted was actually inside the undercover agent. At the morgue, Davidson removed something from the palm of Agent Mendoza's hand. Davidson is a criminal. And now he is planning to hand over what he found to the people who attacked the bus.

Olivia, Charlie, and other FBI agents arrive at the bus station. As Astrid interprets what Roy is hearing, Peter relays it to Olivia in real time. Olivia spots Davidson carrying a metal brief case, but before she can reach him, another man, Ziegler, shoots Davidson with a silenced weapon and grabs the case. Charlie and Olivia chase and corner Ziegler, who places the case and his weapons on the ground as ordered; before they can restrain him, Ziegler steps backwards into the path of a bus and dies instantly.

Back at the Boston FBI offices, technicians remove a glass disk from the metal case that Ziegler stole. Broyles shows Olivia the glass disk. He doesn't know what is on it, but he knows that it is somehow linked to the Pattern. He says he will find out what their friends at the NSA can tell them about it.

Dunham returns to the laboratory just as Astrid is preparing to take Roy home. Peter offers to play something for her on the piano. After they talk, Peter begins playing "Someone to Watch over Me;" Olivia smiles and Walter, with an intrigued look on his face, walks up behind Olivia. It is also revealed that the Ghost Network Roy was tapping into has been shut down, presumably because whoever was operating it has realized their messages were being intercepted.

Later. Broyles meets Nina Sharp of Massive Dynamic and hands over the glass disk, saying he'd rather not "go through channels." Then the two have a cryptic conversation about what is best for Olivia and her future.

Nina walks into a laboratory at Massive Dynamic and hands the disk to a scientist, saying that they have found another one. The scientist confirms that it is intact, and he should be able to break the encryption that is locking the data on the disk. The scientist then gestures to a computer monitor where streams of data are being downloaded. He has been able to stabilize the link to another disk, and has been pulling data off it for the last 72 hours. The top of the data stream is labeled "John Scott," and a progress bar next to the streaming ones and zeros appears to indicate that the task is ten to fifteen percent complete. Nina asks to be informed when the download is finished. Next to the monitor rests the body of John Scott, neural probes snaking back to the monitor.

[edit] Regular cast

• Anna Torv as Olivia Dunham
• Joshua Jackson as Peter Bishop
• Lance Reddick as Phillip Broyles
• Kirk Acevedo as Charlie Francis
• Blair Brown as Nina Sharp
• Jasika Nicole as Astrid Farnsworth
• Mark Valley as John Scott
• John Noble as Dr. Walter Bishop

[edit] Next Episode Clue

The clue to The Ghost Network can be found in the previous episode, The Same Old Story, on a street sign next to the Massive Dynamic building. A sticker placed over a One Way sign reads "Voces Video", which in Latin translates "I See Voices" - the problem affecting Roy McComb until Dr. Bishop realigned his brain.

[edit] Trivia

[edit] General

• A drawing of a disaster in Roy McComb's apartment is dated 9/15/07. McComb said he had been aware of the disasters for the past nine months. This places the current action in the summer of 2008.
• Walter's laboratory is room B314.1, a truncation of the value of pi (3.14159...) with a two point shift in the decimal. In addition to the Room number the glass portion of the door bears the names "Dr. Walter Bishop" and "Dr. William Bell." Bell's name is fainter; it is not possible to determine if Bell's name has been partially obliterated or if the room number and Bishop's name have been restored.

[edit] Music

• Smoke From a Distant Fire by Sanford and Townsend
• Someone To Watch Over Me on piano by Peter for Olivia

[edit] Observer Sighting

In The Ghost Network, Olivia passes by The Observer at South Station bus terminal.

[edit] Cypher

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