The Plateau - Recap

On the Other Side, Milo Stanfield stands on the sidewalk and takes in everything around him. He notices a man drinking coffee, a woman entering a flower shop to buy a bouquet, an approaching bus, and a mailbox near a water puddle. Finally, Milo goes to the mailbox and balances a ballpoint pen on top of it, and then steps away.

As a bike messenger rides down the street, a taxi cab passes the mailbox, splashing the puddle. The water knocks over the pen, and the man drinking coffee notices it. As he goes to investigate it, the bike messenger serves to avoid him and crashes. A bus driver notices the accident... and fails to notice the woman with the flowers as she crosses with the light. The bus hits and kills her instantly.

Olivia, believing she's Bolivia thanks to the programming, arrives for work at Fringe Headquarters. Charlie greets her and it's clear she remembers him. They talk about how she recently underwent treatment for her head trauma. Colonel Broyles watches him from his office, and registers his protest with Secretary Walter Bishop. The Secretary insists that Olivia is entirely her counterpart thanks to their programming, but Broyles thinks having her on his team is too risky. When he demands an explanation, the Secretary explains that they have to immerse Olivia in her counterpart's life so she reaches a plateau and then she will volunteer to show them how to cross dimensions without harm. Once they can cross over safely every time, they can defend themselves from the "attackers" in the other dimension. When Broyles wonders what happens if the programming fails, the Secretary assures him that Olivia will no longer be useful and they can dispose of her.

Fringe Headquarters gets word of the accident, the second one involving a bus driver accidentally hitting someone. Charlie and Olivia take a team to the site and confirm that the oxygen levels are satisfactory. Agent Lee arrives and takes charge, but his EMT warns him that he has to be back in the hyperbaric chamber in eight hours to stabilize his ongoing burn treatment. As they examine the crime scene, Olivia apologizes for drawing a gun on him, but Lee assures her that everything is fine and she never would have shot him.

The team confirms that the second victim is Jillian Foster, a consultant for an electric firm. Lee finds the ballpoint pen, which is exceedingly rare in a society where computer interfaces are almost exclusively used. Lee suggests the pen was involved in the seeming accident, but Olivia is distracted when she sees Peter Bishop across the street. He disappears and Olivia assumes that it's a hallucination.

Olivia comes home and finds her fiancé, Frank, watching a broadcast about a smallpox outbreak in Texas. She figures that since he works for the CDC, he'll soon be leaving to investigate. Olivia tells Frank what happened but dismisses it as a residual effect of her head trauma. He isn't convinced, but Olivia doesn't want to be back in the hospital. She assures Frank that she'll report to Broyles if she has another hallucination.

The next day, Charlie, Lee, and Olivia go over the case but are unable to find a connection between Foster and the first victim, a hospital worker named Cole Arness. Charlie figures it's a coincidence, but Lee takes smug satisfaction in the fact that Olivia agrees with him. When he and Lee are alone, Charlie wonders about Olivia and warns Lee that it's impossible to tell Olivia and her counterpart apart. Lee dismisses his concerns, figuring that he's just more perceptive than Charlie. He then focuses on footage of the crime scene when he spots a ballpoint pen near Arness. Looker agent Farnsworth calculates the probabilities and informs them that it's impossible for the same circumstances to have resulted in the two deaths, unless someone deliberately created the circumstances. However, that would be impossible unless someone could calculate every variable involved out of thousands.

The team gets word of another bus accident and goes to the scene. The bus crashed after the bus driver was distracted by a dog, but nobody is dead. However, when she sees a ballpoint pen roll out from under the bus, she realizes that the "murder" is still underway. She spots Milo on a pedestrian walkway, watching everything intently, and runs up to capture him. A jogger, distracted, runs in front of a bus and is killed. Meanwhile, Milo grabs a bike and throws it off of the overpass. Olivia corners him, just as a truck slows down and swerves to avoid the bike. Milo causally steps off into space, lands safely on the truck, and waves to Olivia as it drives away.

Lee's eight hours is up and Olivia rushes him to the Department of Defense hospital. They barely get him into the hyperbaric chamber in time as he starts to have a relapse. Before going under, Lee tells Olivia to focus on the motive rather than the method.

In Oyster Bay, Milo returns home and his sister Madeline warns him that the hospital has been calling for him all day. She threatens to tell them that he's there, but Milo tells her that her behavior is predictable and that he knows she won't risk him by telling the hospital. When Madeline insists he can't predict her, he predicts everything that she's going to say before she says it. However, she shows him a toy horse and he hesitates, and Madeline warns him that he's lost the ability to feel emotion. She admits that she made a mistake signing him up for the program and insists that he has to follow the rules. Milo ignores her and goes to his room.

Charlie and Olivia use the computers at Fringe HQ to check the witnesses, and Olivia briefly forgets the codes. Suspicious, Charlie tests her memories but she remembers the incident he describes. They then realize that Foster and Arness are connected through their companies, which work with the Ivon Medical Group. They go to the hospital where Ivon is conducting tests and talk to the head doctor, Levin. As they go in, they notice that all of the test subjects use ballpoint pens. Levin explains that their subjects have mental disabilities, and using paper and pen makes it easier for them to communicate. Olivia also has another hallucination, seeing "her" Walter Bishop from the other side.

Once they're alone in his office, Levin admits that he knew all three victims, and identifies Milo as the killer. He shows the agents footage of an experiment they conducted to boost intelligence, and one of them was Milo. The first injection booster Milo's intelligence a hundredfold, and he received five treatments. Levin explains that after the drug trials, the subjects were to be regressed to their original condition. Cole Arness was in charge of Milo, and Foster volunteered to help after Arness was killed. The third victim, Jeffrey Mayer, worked for a firm used to locate missing patients. Madeline is Milo's guardian, and the agents get her address. As they leave, they're unaware that Milo is watching them from a balcony and calculating all of their future actions.

The agents go to Oyster Bay and talk to Madeline. She defends her brother, but Charlie warns that Milo doesn't consider his victims as innocents. When he looks at Milo's room, Olivia asks Madeline about her childhood and Milo's. Madeline admits that she always wanted to protect her older brother, and signed him up for the drug trials. Olivia sympathizes, but appears uncertain as to whether her sister Rachel is alive or dead. She finally convinces Madeline that Milo is in danger, and Madeline gives her a goodbye note from Milo, with the address of the hotel in case she needs to contact him.

Outside, Olivia wonders if Milo deliberately left the note to lure them to him. They contact Farnsworth, who warns that the permutations are endless because Milo could anticipate their anticipating him. Olivia finally decides to go to the hospital. Meanwhile, Milo is watching the hotel and calculating what will happen when Olivia and Charlie arrive.

When the agents arrive, Milo sets the probabilities in motion. He reveals himself and then runs down an alleyway. They split up to pursue him and Olivia follows him down a steam tunnel into a construction site. Milo has predicted that she will hesitate and get her rebreather when she enters a low-oxygen zone, and a forklift will drop concrete blocks on her. However, Olivia doesn't recognize the warning sign and keeps going. The forklift misses her and she tackles a surprised Milo. She begins choking and loses her grip, but Charlie arrives and shoots Milo in the leg as he tries to escape.

As the authorities take Milo away, Charlie asks why Olivia ignored the warning sign. He assumes that she did it because she was being a daredevil, and asks her not to do it again.

Later, Olivia brings Madeline to a hospital and informs her that the drugs were in Milo's system too long, and there's no way to eliminate their effects. Milo has progressed to the point where they can't even comprehend his thought processes. He can only communicate with machines. Madeline goes into the room where Milo is communing with a computer, and puts the toy horse in front of him. There's no sign of recognition in his eyes as he mumbles his endless calculations.

The Secretary checks on Brandon, who is preparing test subjects for the process that Olivia will ultimately undergo. When Brandon complains that the subjects are too distracted, the Secretary tells him to use sensory deprivation tanks. Brandon asks if he regrets leaving scientific endeavors behind, and the Secretary insists that he is still a scientist, but is working in a much larger laboratory.

At her apartment, Olivia watches as Frank packs for his trip to Texas. When he leaves the room for a moment, Peter appears again and tells her that she isn't Bolivia, who would have known the low-oxygen protocol. He tells her to remember her true self and then kisses her. As Frank comes back in, "Peter" disappears and Frank wonders what's wrong. Olivia assures him that everything is fine, but looks nervous after he leaves.

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