Author's note: This was a sort of a story challenge, in a way, given to me on Twitter. I don't know how it came up but it did and this was written. Stopped and started, stopped and started stopped and started, then finally finished (I sense a pattern...). I love making up my own back story for Fringe characters, maybe a little too much! I hope you enjoy and laugh a little. This is to be read with your tongue firmly planted in your cheek.

I'm not sure when this takes place, other than around season 4. And since we got a WHOLE NEW timeline and Peter doesn't exist... sigh, I think this belongs in the old universe's timeline (in my head) if Peter didn't will himself out of existence. Does that cover it? So this is an alternate alternate universe alternate timeline, iteration # 420.

Actually that's a good name: Iteration 420. That's the UNofficial name.

There's no violence or sex or Polivia in it (i'm sorry, forgive me, mea culpa!), but I do mention casual marijuana use so if that offends you, (but you're a Fringe fan [but over 18]), I suggest reading it anyways. I have no first hand knowledge of such things.

Reviews and suggestions are always appreciated.

Thanks for reading!

...

Iteration 420

WALTER MEETS SAM

Sam Bond was a skinny, slightly nerdy looking, dark haired, glasses-wearing beatnik type. In tie-dye. And he didn't wear it "ironically", he genuinely enjoyed wearing it, he came from a place where tie-dye wasn't a fashion anachronism. He was also Walter's pot friend. Walter was Sam's pot friend and unofficial literary muse.

They met each other one day on a hidden path on the outskirts of campus, one that hardly anybody ever used or knew about it. Except when they needed to get away for a few minutes. And then only if they went behind the bushes just to the right of the mini rock stonehenge formation that was on the ground.

Here in this little out-of-the-way spot, many years ago, Walter had commissioned a memorial park bench in memory of his lab assistant Carla Warren. Inscribed on a little silver plaque were her dates of birth and death and a quote from Emmy Noether, a famous German physicist that Carla had admired.

Walter was sitting here, contemplating life and trying out his laboratory concoction of Brown Betty the day that Sam poked his head around the bushes. After a nasty blow to his head, Peter had found out the truth about where he had come from and walked out of Walter and Olivia and Astrid's life without a word on where he was going. And Walter could feel it in his bones that he was soon to have a grand meltdown, one that might eventually send him straight back to the looney bin. So he was self-medicating against it. Heavily self-medicating.

"I was about to do the same thing," Sam spoke and broke Walter out of his downward spiral. Walter patted the bench seat beside him and waved the young man over. A smile cracking open his sad face for the first time in days.

Walter had been about to trip over the edge of melancholy into a bout of full-blown self-pity, all his thoughts squarely centered on the whereabouts and safety of his son. But he was happy for a moment to put that sadness aside. This young man looked like somebody he could get to know and share his love of marijuana with. Peter hadn't ever wanted to smoke a joint with Walter, but not for a lack of Walter trying. Peter was such a square at times, and that's how Walter knew he was really Walternate's boy. That thought broke his heart a little.

Dizzying spiral, grab hold of something. Walter grabbed the edge of the bench and held on for dear life.

Sam sat down and they shared a few puffs and a nice conversation about the meaning of life. It was intense. As intense as a 10 minute conversation about life could be. All the major bulletpoints were brought up and Walter liked this man's answers.

Walter held up another joint and offered it to Sam.

"Do you like it? I've been studying the science of gastronomical cooking. I am trying to apply the same concepts to create the perfect high."

"I've never smoked anything like it," Sam nodded. Then coughed.

Ever since that day two years ago, they had been good friends.

...

FAST FORWARD TO TODAY AND IT'S RAINING (I only mention it because it's important)

So today, two long years after they had met, the two friends listened to records together in a haze of smoke at the young man's apartment. When Sam got the old Harvard professor stoned, he could tell a whopper of a tale. Sam learned to keep a journal handy to write some of it down so he didn't forget it later. Not that he could easily forget about the existence of a separate slightly different universe that also wanted to destroy them. And that string theory was a demonstrably real concept. It made his head spin.

Sam was thinking of using Walter's stories to write his upcoming dissertation in creative writing, but the stories were just too good to waste on a school assignment. Sam was thinking bigger—MacArthur-fellowship-Pulitzer-Prize-winning-New-York-Times-number-one-bestselling-author bigger.

Sam Bond was thinking of a novel or a biography if he could get the man to sign off on it. That was a big 'but'. If even 10% of the stuff that came from this man's lips was true, Sam doubted he could assign any real names to any of it. It was all scandalous. And the CIA would probably "disappear" him from the face of the earth, some of the stuff was so clandestine.

There were government conspiracies and alternate universes and heads of corporations gone mad and people whose mouths sealed themselves shut and asphyxiated them to death with an aerosol spray. Even after 2 years, Sam still wasn't sure if the old guy wasn't just a burnt out hippie with a big imagination that had taken way too much acid in the 60s.

Or a vagrant. At times, Walter's coat looked like he'd been sleeping on the streets. But it was always clean and mended quickly whenever a hole appeared or a button fell off. That was Sam's totem to reality, that's why he had an inkling that whatever this man told him, it was probably mostly true.

They were both seated on a brown hand-me down sofa listening to Queen on the record player, their eyes gazing at the point where the wall met the ceiling. Deep in thought. Freddie Mercury enveloping them with his voice.

"Wouldn't it be rad, Walter, if you could find a way to make this guy sing again? I remember when you first met me, you said you could bring back the dead. Was that true?"

Walter smiled, "Of course it's true. But you know they can't be THAT dead. There's dead and then there's DEAD. Ask my son." Walter's smile softened. Sam had heard this story before. Many times. But this time, a sadness came over Walter when he talked of Peter. Sam had also seen this happen many times before, so he didn't think anything of it.

"It shouldn't matter to you, Walter, you're definitely the guy to figure that shit out." Sam sat forward and tapped the pipe on the table to clear it out.

"Don't swear. As a writer, you should have a better vocabulary than that," Walter's voice was curt and tinged with anger.

After a long silence of deep contemplation Sam agreed, "You know, you're right."

The two let that settle in, then Sam looked sideways at Walter, who was melting into the couch gazing far away. "And you might as well resurrect the Beatles too while you're at it and make them all play a concert together. The reunion concert of the century, courtesy of Walter Bishop." Sam paused to think about something. Something that he could never have imagined himself trying to think as even remotely possible. "Could they even play music after being brought back from the dead?" he trailed off, lost in his whirling thoughts. "Would that even physically be possible? Naw, not even by you. You're a god, Walter, but even God has His limits."

The roaring voice that came out of Walter next was something Sam had never heard before. It started low and built to a crescendo. "So it wouldn't be enough to simply BRING them back to life, you'd actually want me to-" Walter waggled his fingers in front of him "-magically restore their singing and playing abilities too? Never mind the fact that they're probably bones and dust by now. And John Lennon has been shot in the HEAD. IN. THE. HEAD!"

Walter stood in a huff and not-so-gently placed the glass pipe on the coffee table. The CRACK of glass on glass was exaggeratedly loud in the silence. Even Queen had stopped singing and the record had come to an end. The groove-less inner part of the record played endless white noise in the background.

"What a ludicrous proposition from the outset! And I'm NOT God." Walter bent down and wagged a solitary finger in front of Sam's face. "You don't just have cotton mouth, you have cotton brain, young man!"

Walter couldn't sit here and listen to this marijuana-fueled nonsense any more. He snatched his coat from the chair and headed for the door.

"Walter, wait!" Sam stood, grabbing Walter's coat sleeve as he struggled to put it on. "I'm sorry, man. What's got into you?"

"God wouldn't waste his time and effort trying to put together the 'Concert Of The Century'-to prop up sagging ticket sales in the live music industry, to make a gaggle of idiotic beer-guzzling college students who think the world revolves around them happy! And neither would I!"

Walter opened and slammed the door behind him, walked into the blustery cold of winter and descended the metal stairs.

On the third step, he slipped and fell down the rest of the stairs on his butt, throwing curses in angry white puffs the whole way down.

He landed in a puddle and it soaked him through to the bone. Picking himself up off the wet ground, angry, Walter slogged home.