The episode begins with some kind of passionate scene. Peter and Olivia are together in bed… and Olivia wakes with a start. Her phone buzzes; it’s Peter. He’s been working on the machine with Walter, but he needs her help.

Back at Harvard, they play with chemicals while Olivia enters. Apparently they are making breakfast cocktails. Olivia decides not to partake, asking what they needed help with. It seems that they need Broyles’ authorization for testing. She promises to see what she can do and departs.

At this time, somewhere in Southern Vermont, a man is driving a truck. His radio glitches, as do his instruments. He pulls the big rig over, where there are several other cars in the same boat. Looking back in his truck, he sees some pliers floating. He get out and looks up: a plane is spiraling toward the ground. It crashes, and suddenly all the cars come back on.

Wow. It seems that Fringe is still sticking to its season one roots. Yay!

When Team F shows up, it seems that there are no survivors to the crash, but the source of its malfunction is in that region. Astrid for some reason, cannot raise Walter… who is right behind her with Peter. It seems leaving the lab was all Walter’s idea. He has apparently been different lately.

Walter tosses a hubcap, which sticks to a truck. It seems that the area’s electromagnetic force was recently increased dramatically. Walter must take some samples. He wants the plane’s black box and some wreckage. He also wants rhubarb pie.

The team goes to a small town to retrieve Walter’s pie. Olivia can’t get a signal, so she goes to use a pay phone while the guys enter the diner. Peter goes to the restroom while Walter orders pie and coffee, making small talk with the man behind the counter, who likes him so much he offers to give him pie on the house. Olivia, on her way to the phone, spots an empty car with its engine running. The phone is out of order.

When Peter comes out of the bathroom, he hears something strange and goes to investigate. In the main room, Walter is still talking to the staff. The man asks what Walter wants. Walter is baffled, as he has already ordered, and that the man promised to serve it for free. The waiter becomes upset, but still promises to bring the pie. (Is it just me, or was Walter suddenly on a different stool?)

Peter opens a door and finds a man lying on the floor, bloody. Erstwhile, the waiter serves up Walter’s pie. Then, grabbing the knife he used to cut it, he begins swinging it at Walter. Walter backs up, dodging the knife and screaming for Peter. (I have to say, I didn’t see that coming.)

Peter runs into the room and tackles the guy. The guy tries to stab Peter, but Olivia shoots him from behind. Walter looks at the guy’s eyes, which are filling with blood. The man in the back room is in bad shape, and Olivia finds another body behind the counter. It seems that the town is deserted, and all lines are dead. Walter says the man needs a hospital, but the nearest one is 20 miles away.

They leave the little town, Westfield. The man is delirious. The team keeps passing several signs. Welcome to Westfield. Now leaving Westfield. Welcome to Westfield. Now leaving Westfield. They’re trapped.

They go to the Westfield sheriff’s department. The man is steadily declining. Peter returns with a first aid kit, but the Cliff (the patient) insists they’re not safe, and everyone in the town is crazy. The next morning, after getting rigged up to a magic blood transfusion, Cliff is able to tell the town’s story.

Three nights ago, Cliff’s sister said a man had broken into her house. When they arrived, her husband was lying in the bedroom with a GSW to the head. The woman had killed him, saying she had never seen him in her life, though they had been married for 18 years. She was convinced that she had some other life, describing people she had never met and things she had never done.

Everyone in the town began acting the same way. They were all acting schizophrenic. Most people got sick immediately, but others took longer. They started by forgetting things, trembling, getting paranoid, turning violent. He says his wife and daughter are waiting for him, and that he had been in the diner to get them supplies.

As they prepare to try to contact the outside, Olivia theorizes that a nearby military base might be responsible, due to an experiment gone wrong. Suddenly, Olivia remembers a military experiment they investigated that resulted in a town’s disfigurement. Walter has no idea what she’s talking about, but Peter recalls investigating the case. She quickly backpedals, saying she must have read it in his debrief.

When she walks away, Walter asks for one of the guns Peter is grabbing from the cabinet. Peter hands him some pepper spray and tells him to point it in the right direction. Olivia does at least provide Cliff with a gun. Apparently he is now well enough to run around and shoot people.

When they emerge, they see a man walking with a bloody doll in his hand. He is humming, walking aimlessly down the street. Even though he walks right by them, he seems not to see them. Thanks to electromagnetism, the car has stopped working. They have no choice but to walk.

They make their way, with the wind blowing wildly. Olivia’s arm is shaking. She feels dizzy, and suddenly her speech slurs. It seems she’s been affected. She says it feels like someone else was in her head. She hands him her gun so that she won’t hurt anyone.

(I’ve got to say, this is getting pretty cool! Are Fringe’s shark jumping days behind it?)

They enter a high school, where a backup generator is supposed to be. A nervous looking man lets them in. Survivors have been waiting there. Walter asks to examine the one survivor who has apparently gotten sick. She seems normal enough, fairly calm, except that she has two rows of bottom teeth. It also seems that the thing in the diner cook’s eye was a second iris, not blood. Walter believes that the source of the problem is causing body part duplication.

The victim is suddenly convinced that she needs to start supper for her dead husband, who she saw that morning. Then, suddenly, she snaps out of it. Then, again, she wants to start supper. Peter comes in with bad news. The generator is too small to disrupt the electromagnetic field. He encourages Olivia to accept a blood test, too.

Walter tries to comfort Olivia, telling her she is just psychosomatic out of empathy for the victims. When Walter walks away, Olivia tells Peter that she is glad he is there, as Walter has been much improved lately. She also asks what his Olivia is like. Peter answers that his Olivia is driven, stubborn, doesn’t like to lose, and sees the best in others. He also tells her how they met, and that she had given him a place to call home, a routine, etc.

Suddenly there’s a scream. They run into the bathroom. The victim has slit her wrists with scissors. Cliff tells Olivia he regrets not taking another job in Philadelphia. On the speaker, Walter summons Peter and Olivia to the biology lab. He has a theory: the victim had 92 chromosomes in her DNA. He thinks the two universes have begun to merge together somehow. Olivia’s blood, however, was fine. He says the survivors must be the ones who don’t have a doppelganger in Westfield in the alternate universe. What baffles Walter is how the energy required to merge the two towns together. The only possible explanation: the mineral that David Robert Jones stole.

Walter is concerned that the effects he described are just phase one. Phase two is about to begin, as a huge tremor informs them. Cliff comes to get them, and when they look outside various structures are flickering before disappearing. The merging towns are destroying each other. Two things can’t combine the same space. Walter thinks both towns will be destroyed, along with them.

Olivia asks Peter to talk to Walter, who is sinking into a funk. Peter asks if they can be corrected by opposite forces. They need to find the “eye of the storm” where the forces cancel each other out. Only the true center of the merger offers a chance for survival.

Walter and Peter frantically work together to find the center. It appears to be at an intersection four miles away. They depart on an old school bus that won’t be affected by the electromagnetic anomalies. Trouble strikes, however, when more crazed victims pop up from the back of the bus. Walter pepper sprays the attacker, and Peter knocks him out and throws him off the bus. (Guy had two faces. Pretty cool.)

More trouble: the road is blocked. They get off the bus and head for safety. A flickering mass pursues them as they run into a bike shop at the intersection. The glass shatters, and a strange blur obscures the sky as scary noises ensue. When the ruckus is over, nothing remains.

Later, emergency services come. Broyles reports that several unusual voices were placed around the town’s perimeter. It was definitely Jones.

Olivia promises Cliff that the FBI will provide temporary housing. Once they’re all back in Boston, Peter is heading out of the lab. Walter offers him crepes, but Peter promises to be back for them tomorrow.

At her residence, Olivia ties her hair back. There’s a knock at the door; it’s Peter, who is just stopping by. She announces that she has ordered from the place that he and his Olivia used to eat on Friday nights, and kisses him. He pulls away, and they stare at each other, looking alarmed.