“The Equation” is episode eight of season one of Fringe.
In Middletown, Connecticut, a man is driving at night in the rain whilst his son is writing music in the back. The driver spots a woman by a car on the side of the road and pulls over. She’s got a problem with her car and her phone’s dead. The driver calls for a tow truck, which is going to be a while. The woman says she’s late for a meeting; the man says he knows almost nothing about cars but will take a look. He opens the bonnet and red and green lights flash at him. He seems to zone out until he’s touched on the shoulder by the tow truck driver. The woman, her car and his son, Ben, are all gone.
Broyles briefs Olivia and Peter on the details. There have been three other similar missing persons cases over the past ten years. Each time, the same woman. Those taken were let go, but had gone mad. One tried to lobotomise herself and they were incapable of remembering what happened. The others were academics; a ten-year-old boy is not in the same category. Walter mentions green and red. Flashing lights, is he right? Yes, but how does he know? Walter can’t remember.
In Highland, Connecticut, Olivia interviews the driver, Andrew Stockton, and his sister. She says she believes the story and explains that the woman was involved in other abductions. But she doesn’t know why Ben was taken; the others were adults, experts in various fields. The other two exchange a look and Andrew says Ben was kind of an expert himself. Nine months ago, his wife was walking Ben to school when a driver in a rush hit them on a crossing. His wife was killed and the doctors didn’t know if Ben would make it. He was in a coma for six days. It’s easier to show Olivia what happened. There’s a DVD with Ben playing the piano the first day home, and playing it well. Before that, he’d never taken a single lesson. There have been other cases where people with severe brain trauma gained new skills. Two weeks later, Ben was composing his own music, one piece in particular.
Ben is in a small room when the woman enters. Ben wants to see his dad. She has something better. Someone who would very much like to see him. His mother.
In the lab, Walter is fiddling with red and green lights, trying to remember where he heard about them. He was once hired to design a technology designed to induce a state of hypnosis in those watching patterns of light. Not by the government; an advertising agency. It merely caused nausea; Walter hadn’t considered colours. He wants Peter to stare at the lights. Peter does, then Astrid arrives with lunch. And Peter discovers he’s cut the sleeves off his shirt.
Charlie calls Olivia; they have an ID for the kidnapper. Joanna Ostler, a neurologist studying at MIT. She died ten years ago when her car went off a bridge. Eight months before the first abduction. The car was recovered; the body wasn’t.
Olivia arrives at the lab as Walter remembers where he heard about the red and green lights. From Dashiell Kim. Olivia wants to know if they can talk to him. That depends on whether or not he’s succeeded in killing himself; he was a fellow inmate at St Claire’s.
Olivia tells Broyles that Kim looks to be another abductee. He bludgeoned his wife to death and claimed a woman put him to sleep with a Christmas tree and took him away. She wants to interview him. That’s going to be a problem, Broyles says when he looks it up. He’s listed as being criminally insane with knowledge of state secrets. They can’t talk without clearance and that will take at least 6 weeks. Broyles gets a photo of the murder scene, with equations scrawled on the walls.
Ostler takes Ben into a room with a piano. The music from his notebook is on the walls. And his mother is there.
Olivia shows Peter and Walter the photo of the Kim crime scene; Walter would recognise Kim’s work anywhere. Does Walter mean Kim killed others? He was actually referring to the equation; Dashiell; was obsessed with it. He couldn’t complete it. The DVD of Ben playing music is watched and Peter has a thought. He asks Walter if he can render the equation on the photo as music, and plays it. It’s the tune Ben was playing. They’re both trying to solve the equation.
Which is why Ostler has kidnapped Ben. She wants him to finish his piece of music – which will result in him solving the equation. But Olivia and the others can’t wait six weeks to speak to Kim. Ben might be insane by then.