Ninety nine percent of the lights in Massive Dynamic's Manhattan office were now running on energy saving power levels, giving most of the building the illumination of twilight. Only one office, Nina Sharp's office on the 12th floor, was still using the full wattage of its lighting.

Nina sat at her desk, reviewing Brandon's latest reports on the progress of the Tylers. Tyler number 10, by far the most tractable and easy going of the group, was failing his aptitude tests. Tyler 4 was showing incredible potential in astral projection, but was suffering from terrible headaches that no available drugs could seem to alleviate. Tyler 7, the one who had kidnapped Peter, had become so mentally unstable that he had to be placed in a catatonic state. Brandon was recommending termination of their seventh model, something that Nina was having difficulty making a decision on.

The phone on her desk began to ring, and against her better judgment, Nina answered it. It was Philip. He sounded panicked, and he was barking something to her, but the phone began to break up.

"Philip? Philip, your phone must be dying. I can't understand you!" Nina shouted to him.

The line went dead. Frowning, Nina replaced the handset, then picked it up again and tried to dial him again, only to find that the phone line in her office was also dead.

She reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out her cell phone, and found herself staring at a blank, dark screen. "What?" Nina whispered.

"Something wrong, Nina?" a voice asked her. Nina raised her eyes quickly and saw Joe Avila leaning against the doorway, his arms crossed.

"Joe! What are you doing here?" Nina smiled at the doctor, but her senses were starting to prickle with suspicion.

"Oh you know me. I love my work. Can't stay away from it, no matter what happens to me," he walked into Nina's office.

Nina stood up from her desk. "You've been through a lot. Why don't you let me call you a cab so you can get home and rest?"

"Oh Nina. The phones aren't working. The security feeds aren't working. How are you going to call me a cab?"

Nina swallowed, but gave her coolest smile. "Well, perhaps we should go to the restaurant downstairs and use their phone. Won't you come with me?"

He stepped closer to her now, his dark, handsome face looming over hers and blocking the ceiling lights. "Why don't you come with me?"

She stared at him. "What have you done?" she asked quietly.

He frowned, then leaned back slightly. His lips curled into a remorseful smile. "Nina, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you. I haven't done anything."

He just barely finished uttering that last word when his arm shot out of his pocket and he stabbed her with a needle he'd been concealing. Having no time to react, Nina was unable to deflect his arm in time and she sunk to the ground, everything around her becoming dark.

Joe stood triumphantly over Nina's motionless form. "Nothing yet, at least."


Nina's head was swimming. She opened her eyes slowly, carefully, as the light was painful to them. She groaned, trying to move from the chair in which she sat. Her arms and legs were rigid and unmoveable, and when Nina could finally look down without nauseating vertigo, she realized she was tied to the chair she was sitting in.

She heard a faint buzzing noise, and slowly raised her eyes to see that there was a monitor and a microphone in the room with her. The grey snow speckling the screen cleared to reveal Avila in one of the labs, dressed in a bio suit without the headpiece.

He was looking directly into the camera. "Hello Nina. I'm sorry for the drugs. The effects will be temporary, I promise you."

Nina twisted in her seat, helplessly. "Joe, what the hell are you doing?"

He laughed. "Do you really need to ask? I'm almost insulted. A nanotechnologist who's devoted his entire life to the science, finally gets his hands on the equivalent of a Boticelli. What do you think one does with it? One shares it with the world."

"Joe you know what these things are capable of. You know that the other side sent these things over to-"

"I don't care about the other side, or what their plans are," Dr. Avila interrupted her. "I've spent a long time going about acquiring these pieces of gold. They are the future."

"They're just bugs. Small, killer bugs," Nina spat out.

Dr. Avila shot Nina a look so full of fury that it could have fried the feed's circuits. "You're just as stupid as the rest of them. What a shame. The fact is, their potential is unlimited. I've freed them from their bounds. I suppose I should thank you – making me work with that addlepated old kook gave me plenty of time to reconfigure their programming. He was too concerned about the little soap opera playing out around him to notice what I was doing. Now, they don't just replicate in cellular peptides. Anything with a carbon base will work as a nest."

With that, Dr. Avila picked up the plastic carton containing the nanite tubules and looked into them. "They're magnificent. And I'm going to help them take their rightful place in the world."

Nina winced as she began to rub her human wrist against her bonds. "What are you going to do?"

Dr. Avila looked up at her, a nasty smirk on his face. "I never told you about my father, did I? I never knew him. All I know about him…is that he lived in two different worlds. He never gave me anything – except for knowledge of this nanotechnology from the other side. I've been waiting a long time to get these – to get everyone in the right place. And now – finally – I'm here. Nina my dear, your company is going to help me introduce these nanites to the world."

Nina couldn't help but laugh, in spite of her situation. "You know that I'll never let that happen."

"It doesn't matter what you allow or don't allow. You've heard of Diamond Green, haven't you? The best-selling organic all-purpose cleanser in the northern hemisphere. Massive Dynamic produces it. I think I can improve on the formula. My nanites, plus a missing bonding agent I needed from this office, equals a revolution in the way we see the world. A shipment is being produced tonight, to go out to thousands of offices, stores, and homes around the country. I just need to go to the factory and add the special ingredient. By the time anyone realizes what's happening, it'll be too late. It's going to be beautiful."

"Joe, you're sick. You need help," Nina told him calmly. Her panic and determination finally coming to a head, Nina managed to free her left wrist from her ropes.

"I wouldn't move, if I were you," Dr. Avila warned. "I've introduced just a few of my unconverted little friends to your cybernetic arm. They're inside a pressurized module. You start moving around, the chamber will burst, they'll make their way past your ports and into your bloodstream. You don't want that."

Nina froze, her eyes just barely skimming over her robotic arm. "Why?" she said softly. "Why do this? Why kill everyone and everything?"

By now Dr. Avila was packing up the cartons and preparing to leave. "Because it's the closest to perfection this sorry world is ever going to know. Organic life…is flawed in so many ways. We try to deny the flaws in different ways: love, humor, religion. It doesn't work. There is no harmony. These nanites...they grow, develop, replicate, all working together perfectly. There's no pain, no suffering. That's what they'll bring to us."

There was a low thud coming from outside the lab, in the hallway. Setting the nanites down carefully on the table, Dr. Avila turned to look in the direction of the sound. The moment his back was turned and he went to investigate, a grate in the ceiling was thrown open and Olivia jumped out of it, landing on her feet and jumping up quickly enough to catch him by surprise. Aiming carefully, she fired two shots at him: one in the shoulder and one in the knee. He stumbled backward, away from the table and against the laboratory door.

The doors quickly burst open and the police collected the screaming Dr. Avila from the floor and got him into an ambulance waiting outside.

Olivia looked up into the camera. "Nina! Are you all right?"

"Yes, but he rigged my arm with some of the nanites! If I move, they'll burst!"

Olivia turned to Walter, who now entered the room with Peter. "Walter, go help Nina. You'll need to remove her arm without the nanites being activated."

"Right way, Olivia. Peter, you'll help me, won't you?" Walter asked.

"Yeah, I'll be right there," Peter told the older man. He turned to Olivia. "How the hell did you know that it was Avila? No one suspected him."

"I had a hallucination of this phrase that I couldn't make sense of – Love's just hard to paint. I finally realized…that it was an anagram for Don't trust Joseph Avila. The handwriting I saw was the same as on the envelope with a photo of me that someone sent to Harry – Harold Locksmith. I realized that Avila must have sent him the photo so that he'd turn the nanites over to us, and since Avila worked for Massive Dynamic…"

"He'd be in the perfect place to get his hands on the nanites," Peter concluded. He worked up the courage to talk about something else. "Look, Olivia, I know that there are some things that just aren't my business…" he trailed off, hoping that Olivia would take his cue and tell him what he wanted to know.

But she didn't. She stood quiet and strong, but cold. It was becoming her usual way. He sighed when he realized he'd been closed off. "I'll see you around."

He left her standing in the lab while he went to join Walter. Together they managed to remove Nina's arm safely and extract the nanite chamber. Walter was unusually quiet while they worked.

"Walter…what is it?" Peter asked him.

The older man smiled bitterly. "While we were waiting to burst in on Avila, I heard what he said about me. Addlepated old kook."

"Walter, don't even think…"

"It's okay, son. I'm not so fragile that I could be brought down by the insults of a madman. But he did make a good point. I was….distracted by what has been going on around me. And it very easily could have ended in tragedy. What's happening with you and Olivia…and with you and that…visit you want to make, are for you, and you alone, to work out. I can't shield you from life…and I can't make the difficult decisions for you. I'm – I'm not going to try anymore."

Peter laid his hand on Walter's arm. "Thanks Walter. I appreciate that. But you should know…it's enough for me to know you're there. Even if you're not saying a word."

Walter smiled and gently patted Peter on the back. "I'd like to go home soon, but first, I need to speak with someone. Will you wait for me in the car?"

Peter agreed to meet him downstairs, and once the younger man left, Walter jogged over to the laboratory, hoping Olivia was still there.

She was. She was just finishing her report to Broyles and overseeing the secure confinement of the nanites.

Once Broyles excused himself, Walter stood close to Olivia. "You did an excellent job, my dear."

"Well, Walter, I have you partially to thank. You helped me understand the hallucinations I was having. And you mentioned Avila's full name, which helped me piece together the anagram. Speaking of which, I had that hallucination in the Library of Congress, before I had my vision of Harry. Harry definitely didn't know who Dr. Avila was. So how did I get that message?"

Walter looked away, trying to find the right words to explain. "It's – I believe it's because...your abilities are becoming evolved to the point that you are able to experience the world without the confines of time. In some ways, time…is just another spatial dimension, like depth or height. You are just beginning to – to transcend the boundaries of what present, past, and future are. This is probably not going to be the last time in which your mind knows something before it happens."

Olivia gazed at Walter, not bothering to banish the fear from her face.

In the office above the floor in which they stood, Nina Sharp made the executive decision to destroy all the nanites – a direct violation of William Bell's directive.


Three days later, Olivia was sitting in her living room, drinking her morning coffee and waiting to be called to another case. Perhaps it would happen, perhaps it would not. She couldn't be sure which scenario she was hoping for.

Next to her on the end table lay an envelope addressed to Peter that she planned to give him the next time she saw him. Inside was a letter that Olivia hoped would start to change everything.

When Peter took off after finding out that Walter had taken him from his universe, Walter lamented to Olivia that he'd written a letter for him explaining everything, but had ripped it up before he could give it to him.

"I just sat there in that hospital room, tongue-tied and rambling, while he just got angrier and angrier," Walter told her as she tried to put him to bed that night. "I'd written a letter to him. The letter was more concise. It explained everything in just the right words. But when the time came, I just couldn't give it to him."

Olivia looked down at the old man she'd come to care for like a father. She could see the lines of the years in his face in the dim light, but he reminded her of a boy, confessing to a wrongdoing and not knowing how to make it right.

"Walter…you were afraid of losing him. I was too. It's…understandable why you couldn't tell him."

Walter smiled sadly. "I just can't believe he left, even after I got the sign. I guess…He might've forgiven me, but he didn't…." he trailed off, finally falling into a dreamless slumber.

Remembering Walter's argument of the value of a letter, Olivia decided to write one of her own. Like an author first trying out her literary powers, she had read her letter over and over again, trying to imagine what her reader would feel and think when he absorbed her words.

The letter began by explaining that while Olivia knew that Peter never meant to hurt her, he did, and now she needed time to herself. She wrote that she hoped that one day they could try to repair their relationship, but even if things would never be the same, she knew now that what he'd told her before was true. That along with Walter, Astrid, and the others who lived every day in the realm of the impossible, they were a family. For better, and for worse.

The second part was decidedly more difficult for Olivia to write, but she knew that it was necessary. She confirmed what Peter had no doubt suspected by now: that she knew Harold Locksmith before they started investigating his death. She recounted when and where they'd met, and what had happened between them. She explained that part of the reason why she'd done it was to escape from her pain for a little while. She confessed that she would be lying if she said there wasn't a part of her that did it out of spite.

Olivia acknowledged that Harry was special to her, now in his death. But even if he hadn't died, she was never going to pursue anything more than a passing night with him. In the same way, she wrote, that Peter would never pursue anything more with the other Olivia once he knew who she was and what she had done.

A thorn of doubt pierced Olivia's confidence at this last thought. After all, Olivia had lived that woman's life. She had sampled her confidence, her charisma and charm. She knew that it had been attractive to Peter. But, as Olivia pressed on in her writing, she convinced herself that she had to let her faith in Peter override her doubt.

Olivia ended her letter by reflecting on all the things she and Peter had been through together. It had never been easy, but she knew now that she wouldn't have changed anything. And now, with more at stake than ever, it was more important than ever before that they bring the very best of themselves to the table, every time.

To Olivia's surprise, the part she had the most difficulty with was coming up with her closing. "Best" was too icy, and "Love" was too forgiving. Finally, she settled on "Yours." Somehow, it was familiar, yet non-committal at the same time. It fit her.

She was down to the last sip of her coffee when there was a knock on the door. She opened it to find a FedEx delivery man, holding a small padded envelope. He handed her the envelope and she thanked him.

She unwrapped the package to find a simple white book titled If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him! She opened the cover to find a simple typed note inside: Olivia. Because you asked. Peter.

The ringing of her cell phone swept her away from the emotions starting to bubble within her but were not yet defined. It was Broyles, giving her an address she needed to get to immediately.

She programmed the directions to Parklane Senior Care into her GPS. She put her coffee cup in the sink and filled it with water to soak. She pulled her long, dark coat around her, and, remembering the book, she stuffed it into the pocket. She began to walk to the door, but then just stopped in her tracks.

She knew she had to leave, but her feet wouldn't move. She touched her coat pocket and felt the book's cover through the wool.

Because she asked. Because she wanted to insinuate herself into every part of the life that Olivia was starting with Peter. Because she cared…or, rather, pretended to care. Because Peter cared for her.

Because she asked…and suddenly Olivia could see it clearly in her mind. It didn't matter that it was all in her imagination. Olivia could see it, and that made it real to her.

Peter is walking with a woman whom he thinks is Olivia on his arm, strolling through the streets of Boston. It's a cold afternoon, so Peter pulls Olivia a little closer to him, and she allows herself to be pulled in, making their walking slightly awkward, but adorable to anyone watching them.

After lunch at the Angora Deli, where Peter notices that Olivia has a surprising affinity for avocadoes on her sandwiches, they decide to go to Brattle Theater and catch an odd, existentialist film that someone from Peter's eccentric circle of acquaintances recommended. They huddle together in the very center of the theater, watching an odd spectacle of two men and two women trapped together in an enormous trashcan, floating out to sea.

"This reminds me of Waiting for Godin," Olivia whispers to Peter.

"It's Godot," Peter corrects her, munching his popcorn. It does give him pause, her mistake, and he turns to look at her. She senses his gaze and she turns to him, then smiles when she notices a small kernel shell is stuck on his lip. As she gently brushes it away, Peter feels his doubts begin to recede once again.

An hour later, they leave the theater, and Olivia wraps her arm around Peter's waist and pulls him against her as they leave. "Weird. Weird taste, Bishop. I can't wait to see what other things you're into."

"You didn't like it?" Peter says with a mock frown.

"Uh…maybe I should have read the book first. Was there a book?"

"Hmm. Don't know. I'll have to see."

Olivia laughs. "I bet the book is just a riot."

So after Peter drops Olivia off, he starts doing painstaking research, tracking down copies through Amazon and the library system. Finally he finds one copy on the east coast, and he orders it online, imagining the look on Olivia's face when she gets it.

Peter probably imagined he'd be at his desk in Walter's lab, when Olivia would walk up behind him with the book. "Because I asked, huh?"

Peter planned to turn and smile. "Just because you asked. Of course. Not easy to find, by the way."

"Hmph," Olivia would snort. "Next time I'm asking for a Mustang convertible, if that's all it takes." She'd lean down and kiss him sweetly on the cheek. "Thank you. I'm touched."

Stroking the smooth paper cover of Peter's gift, Olivia now realized why he hadn't seen through her double's deception.

He didn't want to.

The signs were all there. Quicker with a smile, less intense. But that only meant easier to connect with. More fun to be around. She was the Olivia he'd wanted her to be.

Peter had taken the easy way out. Instead of questioning what he knew was wrong, he decided to stay comfortable. He'd enjoyed his fun, easy, passionate romance with an imposter while Olivia endured solitary confinement. Hallucinations. Experimentation. Threats of death. All suffered at his father's hands.

She'd sacrificed everything and left her world to get him back. And now, this was her reward.

Olivia blinked her eyes quickly, reminding herself that she needed to go. But before she left to meet her team at Parklane, she returned to the end table to retrieve the letter she'd just written. She gave the white envelope the briefest of looks before tearing it in two and tossing the pieces into the nearby wastebasket.