Season 1, Episode 3:
The Ghost Network
A man named Roy McComb confesses to his priest that he sees visions of bad things, including a bus where everyone is going to die. Simultaneously with this scene, a man enters a bus, unleashes a canister emitting gaseous fumes, and steals a backpack before quickly getting off. The Fringe team arrives soon after, only to find the fumes have hardened into an amber-like substance, trapping and killing those inside. Walter studies the substance and concludes it started out as a gas and then solidified, suffocating the passengers. While looking at a victim's video footage, Olivia discovers a backpack is missing, and traces it back to one of the victims, a Federal employee with undercover connections to a drug cartel. They interview her "handler", who comes to identify her body. The Fringe team finds out about Roy, and search through his apartment, believing he is behind the bus and other Pattern-related terror attacks. They soon realize all of his drawings are dated before the incidents took place, despite the fact that several of them were never made public. In an interrogation, Roy tells Charlie he's been receiving his visions for nine months, roughly corresponding to the first Pattern-related incidents.
Meanwhile, they trace the substance to Massive Dynamic. Olivia interviews Massive Dynamic executive Nina Sharp, who tells her the substance has been seen in an attack before. Walter suspects Roy is psychic and runs tests on him before realizing Roy has some kind of magnetic compound in his blood. This leads Walter to recall he and his old lab partner William Bell had conducted research on creating a "Ghost Network" to secretly communicate messages from one person to another in an otherwise undetectable frequency range. During this research, Roy was one of his test subjects. Walter further theorizes that someone else has perfected his research, and that Roy is overhearing secret messages from some of the people behind the terrorist attacks. Olivia and Peter arrive at his old house to find equipment needed to tap into Roy's mind.
Using the equipment, they are able to intercept messages in Latin detailing an upcoming exchange at South Station in an hour. They realize the handler removed a small crystalline disk from the Federal agent's hand when he identified her body, and that he is now going to exchange it for something else. Olivia intercepts the man, who is killed before she can talk to him. She chases another man involved in the exchange, who commits suicide in front of a bus after giving them a briefcase containing the disc. Phillip Broyles secretly gives the disc to Nina for analysis, while Roy is sent home, as they believe he will no longer see visions because the Ghost Network has been compromised.
Tropes present in this episode include:
- Aborted Arc / Left Hanging: This episode brings up Peter's Dark and Troubled Past and then drops it completely next episode, especially after Season 3. Some planned novels are going to explore it further.
- And I Must Scream: As we learn later (much, much later), people encased in Amber are still technically alive.
- Artistic License – Medicine: The axial images shown of Roy's brain are a CT scan NOT an MRI.
- Brain Uploading: Agent Scott through a few electrodes along the hairline
- C.A.T. Trap: Bulging veins and screams in the scanner
- Early-Bird Cameo: That Amber? You're going to see it again. Eventually.
- Mad Artist: Roy gets visions of the Pattern incidents through the Ghost Network, and he draws what he sees to try and vent it off. He himself is terrified and thinks he's going crazy and/or that the Devil is speaking to him. Needless to say, his artwork is very macabre.
- Mad Scientist Laboratory: The addition of the piano and cow to the more traditional body parts in jars and operating table is nice.
- Mundane Utility: Walter's pretty sure the Ghost Network receiver can be re-calibrated to receive free cable.
- Omniglot: Astrid reveals this to be her secret talent.
- Psychic Link: Subverted; the Ghost Network has been commandeered by the mysterious agents to transmit regular radio waves, but the man with the receiver in his head still picks it up and his brain attempts to unscramble the data as best it can.
- Walter's original concept for the Ghost Network WAS akin to Psychic Link, but he didn't manage to do it. The mysterious bad guys took the easy way out by making it into a ghost phone line.
- Smart People Know Latin: The group behind the incident communicate in Latin for some reason. In the Ghost Network it makes sense, since it's hard to understand if there's someone hearing. If Astrid wasn't around or didn't know Latin, the Fringe team would be lost.
