Project 618 – Exploration 8 –

NB/ See lab notes Pr617 Ex1-34 and Pr618 Ex 1-7, located in rom-file16.

Prior to Bell's focus on the Cortexiphan drug trials – something Walter seemed to happily turn a blind eye to, even though he required Peter's higher brain function and unique insight – he and Bishop had been manufacturing a device to close off portals into alternate realities we, by organised chaos, may have glimpses into.

This passing between one or more realities is something that we have well documented since the birth of project 617 and the discovery of 'soft spots.' Project 618 acted as a plug essentially, controlling but not undoing the work of Project 617.

Cortexiphan for Bell was never something inhumane. Yes, it required experimentation of children and yes, it required the recurring exploitation of one child – the boy – to develop the drug through its early stages. But it did so much more than that. By heightening the minds and abilities of these children, they would be more equipped to cope with what was coming.

And what was coming?

* Project 617: When inebriated on hallucinogenics, William and Walter believed to be accessing these other realities and wanted to establish something more concrete, something more stable. Enhancing minors was just to prepare our future generations but for now, for those of us not mentally capable of naturally accessing these other versions of ourselves beyond the fleeting discomfort of deja vu, they had successfully passed between these other worlds.

** This transportation wasn't as simple as Walter's unstructured time machine project – brilliant in theory but in practice much, much more life threatening.

*** Walter should have known better, should have remembered the implications here. Stealing not just one child, but two...

Attached, personal lab report –

When we found Walter that morning, the lab wrecked, himself drunk and desolate, I thought that was it. I waited, holding that baited breath, for the news that the boy had slipped away quietly in his sleep. But that wasn't what Walter had planned for him, it seemed.

We couldn't give the child a normal life and apparently his father couldn't give him a normal death either. He had stolen the second child from the other reality, a healthier version with disconnected memories and replaced him with the Peter that we had all known for years so as not to upset his wife. He couldn't bring a little boy back from the dead any sooner than he could be seen to be bringing one back from another reality. So she had to believe that her son had miraculously recovered from his terminally ill health.

There is more than one of everYthing.

But perhaps the most frightening thing isn't that he had managed to save his son at all. He had just damned him twice. Wrong both boys, for both were kidnapped. Kidnapped by their own father. Out of love? Out of desperation? Irrationality? Grief.

The healthy Peter was taken from the alternate reality in which Walter had unplugged without consent. The unhealthy Peter... the poor boy was taken quickly in the night, brought back here I am to believe, this very lab. Brought back to die. Walter sat with him, he said, just watching the little boy die. No pain killers, no doctors, no hope.

He wouldn't tell us what he did with the body but his fingernails were dirty and his clothes grubby. I expect he gave the child a proper burial. Perhaps when the soil settles, he might even see to it that the lost soul deserves to have his own gravestone erected. Eventually.

He understood that he had done wrong. Somewhere another Walter has lost a Peter too. Now there are two heartbroken fathers. Maybe he did a complete swap and gave his alternate self a child to bury, letting him think that his son was kidnapped and murdered and that was that: a heinous crime but not an uncommon thing. But, somehow, I doubt it.

Project 618 was started up for a reason – to control events and individuals spilling in between two worlds. How could Walter, an advocate of the plug-device, be so myopic? The complications are endless here. For Peter anyway.

His father may want to let him rest but we'll have to examine the new him now. Regular doctors will think it fascinating that he's free of bird flu but for us, we know that he isn't accustomed to our world. The ailments stemming from such an unprepared crossover and from one so young are inconclusive as of yet.

I don't know what's worse: burying a child, or burying a child and abducting another to parent, or having that option in the first place? I think Walter has been wronged himself here. I think science has wronged him. Tortured him. Probably because he couldn't solve this from the start. So he took to trying to solve it even in the End.