“Jacksonville” is episode fourteen of season two of Fringe.
In a building in Manhatan (yes, that’s how it’s spelled) a woman asks a man if it’s real coffee he’s drinking. Yes; he has contacts in Hawaii. An odd statement. The building starts to shake; micro quakes have apparently been happening recently. The woman leaves and the man has a plan for the Pentagon Annex when a bigger tremor hits. Afterwards, there’s a metal bar running through the man, he has more arms and legs and an odd lump on his chest.
Olivia calls Peter to tell him he’s won a trip to New York. Walter is excited; he’s never won anything before. On the way, Walter says that an earthquake in Manhattan is possible, but unlikely. Broyles tells them witnesses saw the ground shift but no-one saw what happened.
Bodies are being wheeled out of the, odd-looking, building when they arrive. Broyles says there are no survivors. Olivia is staring at the building; Walter is too. It looks rearranged. Inside, people have been merged together. Walter posits a quantum tectonic event. The fabric of reality torn apart then put back together wrong. Olivia asks the odds on this being natural. Well, it’s possible.
There’s a call that they have a survivor. The man from earlier, Ted Pratchett. He wants to speak to his wife and Broyles heads off to contact her. Olivia asks what happened and Ted tells her it was a tremor like the others. Walter is examining a picture on the wall. Olivia asks Ted if there was anything unusual. Just what everyone saw. Yesterday the dogs were howling and there were all the microquakes. Neither Olivia nor Peter have heard of any quakes in New York.
Walter has found the plans, to the New Pentagon Annex. Broyles returns; Ted doesn’t have a wife and never did. Walter asks Ted some questions. The year, 2011, the president, Obama, and the buildings targeted on 9/11. The White House and the Pentagon. Walter thinks he knows what happened as Ted dies. They then investigate the lump on Ted’s chest. It’s a second Ted’s head. That, too, dies. Walter says they are in two buildings. One from the alternate universe.
Outside, Walter wants the Teds taken back to the lab. Olivia says this is what William Bell warned her about. Newton would try to open a door from their universe to the other side, and this is the consequence. She’s sure he was here.
In the lab, Astrid looks at the Teds and says she doesn’t think she can do this one. Walter asks her to go through the evidence from the building, looking for anything that doesn’t belong. She finds a Richard Nixon silver dollar and a double decker car. Something strikes Walter. He knows what Newton did and he’s just remembered what happens next.
Olivia and Peter are with Broyles; they have a photo of Newton and his men on the site two hours before the incident, posing as a construction crew. Walter calls Peter; he needs them back at the lab.
Walter has a newspaper clipping of a car fused to the statue of John Harvard. Peter heard oof it; it was a prank, though no-one worked out how it was done. It was Walter and William Bell. They made a car travel to the other side. Then a car from the other reality came back. The universe seeks balance; they sent a car and one of equal mass came back. A building appeared here. Now one of equal mass will be sent back. In just under 35 hours. It can’t be stopped, and they need to evacuate the building. Once they work out which it is. According to Walter, moments before the event, the building will take on a sort of glimmer. Not visible to the human eye. But Olivia will be able to see it. Because she could before. As a little girl, she had the ability, and Walter thinks he may be able to elicit it again. They need to go to the day-care centre in Jacksonville.
Olivia tells Broyles about the centre; Bell bought it, and the entire military base, from the government and shut it down. So, they head to Jacksonville, to a place where Olivia, despite having an excellent memory, has no memories of. Inside, Walter tells her ion one room there are 16 items from the other side. Olivia can’t see anything. They’ll need to do the experiment again. If Olivia does end up with the ability to see things from the other side again, what else might she see?