Chapter 16: Vicariance

Robert Frost, from "The Road Not Taken":

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Peter walked up behind Olivia and looked over her shoulder.

"What are you doing?" he asked curiously.

She moved her hand to reveal the sketch she was making. It was a woman's face, a woman with dark hair and wide, dark eyes.

"Who is she?" Peter asked, examining the sketch.

"She appeared in the lab one night. The door was locked. One minute there was no one there, and then she was standing there. She gave me the idea for how to find you."

"Do you think she's an Observer? I always did think it weird that none of them appeared to be women. Makes you wonder where new Observers come from."

"I don't know. She said her name was Alia. Astrid figured out that alia means 'the other' in Latin."

"So she's something else. Something other than the Observers." Peter's eyebrows creased.

Olivia noticed his perplexed expression. "Do you recognize her?"

"Maybe." He was quiet for a moment. "After the machine, after I disappeared, it was a few weeks before...before I appeared here."

Her head tilted toward him. "Where were you?"

"I have no idea. My memories from that time are fuzzy and...weird. But I feel like...I feel like I met her there."

"That makes no sense."

"No, it doesn't. But then, when's the last time anything in our lives has made sense?"

She smiled. "Good point."

"I think I talked to her there."

"What did she say?"

He shook his head slightly, trying to remember.

There was a knock at the door.

"I'll be right back," he said.

She nodded and went back to working on the sketch.

Agents Dunham and Lee were outside the door. Peter opened it. "What's up?"

"I brought satellite telemetry data from the area of the earthquake in Ontario," Agent Dunham said, handing him a thick manilla envelope. "I wanted you to look it over."

"Anything in specific you wanted me to look for?" he asked.

"Walter thinks there might be some kind of pattern in the gravitational waves. I'd like a second opinion."

"Okay. I'll take a look at it."

"We'd also like to talk to Olivia," Lincoln said. "I mean the other Olivia. Your Olivia."

She appeared at the door. "About what?"

"Broyles wants to begin debriefing you about the cases you worked in your universe as soon as possible," Lincoln said. "And we thought you might prefer we talk to you here rather than drag you back in for questioning."

"I appreciate that," Olivia said. "And I've been meaning to thank you for what you did for me earlier."

Lincoln glanced at Agent Dunham. "Don't thank me. I should have done more. I shouldn't have let it happen."

"Don't worry about it," Olivia said.

Peter looked back and forth between them. "What happened?"

"It's not important," Olivia said. "Let's get to the debriefing."

The two Olivia Dunhams sat down at the kitchen table, one wearing a suite and holding a pen and notepad in hand, the other wearing ill-fitting teeshirt and jeans she'd borrowed from Peter and holding a mug of coffee.

"I am sorry about the test," Agent Dunham said.

"But not sorry enough that you wouldn't do it again if you had to," Olivia pointed out. "Don't worry about it. I would have done the same thing. Where do you want to start?"

"Let's start with the first case you worked for Fringe Division."

Peter and Lincoln were in the living room. They could see the two Dunhams, but weren't close enough to overhear their conversation.

Peter was frowning. Lincoln had told him about the test Agent Broyles and Dunham had devised to determine Olivia wasn't a shapeshifter. He was angry, angrier about what they'd done to her than he would have been if they'd pulled something like that on him. Because it was Olivia the gun had been leveled at, it seemed indefensible.

They hadn't spoken for a couple of minutes.

"You're lucky you never met another you," Lincoln told him. "It's weird. It can be really annoying to see yourself how other people must see you."

"As far as I know, I'm the only Peter Bishop in any universe who survived."

"That's kind of a depressing thought, too."

"A little."

Lincoln nodded toward the two women at the table. "They look so much alike. The Olivia from over there at least does her hair differently. Those two could really trip us up if they tried to."

Peter smiled at the thought. "In my timeline, the Olivia from the other side replaced my Olivia for months, and I didn't figure it out."

"How close were you to her back then?"

"Too close."

"Ah." Lincoln nodded, understanding exactly what he was implying. "How long were you in the doghouse with Olivia after that?"

"I'm still trying to make it up to her. After she found out, it was like she couldn't even look at me for a while."

"But she still came here to get you anyway?"

"Yeah."

Lincoln looked back at the two women in the kitchen. "You are one lucky man."

Peter could only laugh.

"Hey, one of these days we should have a double date."

"You think it's at all a good idea to take them out in public together?"

"Why not? People will assume they're twins."

"Unless we call them both Olivia. That would raise some eyebrows."

"That's a good point," Lincoln conceded.

The conversation in the kitchen had drifted away from work.

"So let me get this straight, after Mom died, you were basically adopted by Nina sharp?"

"She was my legal guardian until I turned 18."

Olivia shook her head. "I just can't figure out how that happened. How was it that I didn't even know who Nina Sharp was until I started investigating Massive Dynamic in the FBI, and you were actually raised by her."

"And you and John Scott...?"

"Yeah. He was planning on asking me to marry him, but...his death got in the way of that. It was complicated."

Dunham shook her head. "John and I were close—a lot closer than we should have been—but not that close."

"From what I've seen and what Peter's told me, our two worlds are almost identical. How could our lives have diverged so much?"

"It's weird," she agreed thoughtfully.

"And yet we both ended up with the FBI."

"Well, I've known I wanted to be an FBI agent since I was nine, when I killed my abusive stepfather."

Olivia stared at her. "You killed him? I just shot him once. He survived. As far as I know, he's still alive."

"Is it just me," Lincoln asked, watching from the living room, "or do those two actually look like they're getting along?"

Peter looked up from the pages of data he was studying. "Yeah, they do."

"I did not expect that."

"No kidding. Especially since the Olivia from over here and from the other side can't stand each other." He tried focusing his attention back on the satellite data. "When Olivia is in an excited emotional state, she can see a difference between things from our universe and the other side."

"Olivia in an excited emotional state...that's hard to imagine."

Peter chuckled. "True. But my point is, there has to be some physical difference, something she can pick up on. Maybe something on the quantum level. And if we could figure out what..."

"We could use it to identify shapeshifters."

"Yeah. I was thinking we could use it to spot other crossover events like this one before they happen, but that would probably be an even more useful application."

The two Olivias returned to the living room. "We're going to the lab."

Peter and Lincoln stood. "You're okay going back there?" Lincoln asked Olivia.

"Yeah. We'll finish the debriefing later. Walter wanted to run some tests on the two of us, and we want to get started on it."

"What kind of tests?" Peter asked.

Agent Dunham answered. "He wants to compare us side by side. We're genetically identical, so any differences between us are a result of environment. She's never had a migraine in her life and I get them a few times a month, so we want Walter to start there."

"If he can discover what difference in our brain chemistry causes her to have migraines, he might be able to cure it," Olivia added.

"But first we're going clothes shopping, because I'm not going to be seen in public in this," Dunham said, gesturing to the other Olivia's attire.

"Okay," Lincoln said slowly. "We'll meet you at the lab later." After the two Olivias walked out the door, he commented, "This could get complicated."

"Complicated was three years ago when an attractive FBI agent blackmailed me into going back to Boston with her and getting my father out of an institution. This is way, way past complicated."