[pressimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/8f3220331a59.jpg[/pressimg] In 2008, the television show Fringe debuted on Fox Network and
quickly found an audience. Some of Fringe's watchers were undoubtedly new to topics like chemical terrorism, parallel realities, and big corporations
funding "pseudo" science, but many of Fringe's immediate audience had been discussing and arguing such matters for years as both believers and
skeptics. And while Fringe, brought to us by J.J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, kindly allowed us to follow along with the fictional
characters Olivia Dunham (played by Anna Torv), the reluctant Peter Bishop (played by Joshua Jackson), and the beloved mad scientist Dr. Walter Bishop
(played by John Noble) the wildly popular message board AboveTopSecret.com forced the same audience to consider the possibility that it is all
real.
September 6, 2009
by Jennifer Caress (a.k.a. Alora)
For those with pseudoscience on the mind, and for those who spot a conspiracy everywhere they turn, Fringe is like the next great meal- nutritiously
entertaining! Likewise, for those who dare to question, dare to think outside of general boundaries, AboveTopSecret.com gives the brave and the weary
a place to discuss, argue, learn and share. The only thing Fringe and AboveTopSecret.com asks of us is that we think and that we dare to ask the
question, "what if?"
Episode 1: "Pilot"
For Fringe's pilot episode, simply titled "Pilot", Flight 627 encounters an electric storm during which one passenger looks more nervous than the
rest. He injects himself with a syringe, sealing not only his fate but the fate of all aboard the doomed ship. By the time the plane lands, via
autopilot, everyone on board is dead, having suffered a gruesome, skin-melting death. Whatever was in the nervous man's syringe was contagious. Very
contagious, meaning that everyone on Flight 627 died as science's unwilling lab rats.
How possible is this scenario? Perhaps ask those who were exposed to anthrax in 2001 by opening their mail, or the U.S. soldiers who unknowingly
tested Agent Orange for the American government during the Vietnam War. Or perhaps we are all caught in a biological and chemical experiment right
now, commonly referred to as "swine flu"? Maybe, just as the fictional passengers of the pilot episode, we won't realize that we are the experiment
until it is too late.
Mexican Swine Flu-An Advanced Biowar Event (April 25, 2009)
Is Swine Flu Man-Made? (April 28, 2009)
Episode 10: "Safe"
Perhaps it's just a coincidence that "Safe", where a team of bank robbers steal from the vault by going through the vault's walls, just happens to
take place at the Philadelphia Mutual Savings Bank. You know, Philadelphia? As in the Philadelphia Experiment.
For those who may be a little rusty with their conspiracy theories, the Philadelphia Experiment is rumored to be the American government's attempt at
teleportation, invisibility, and transporting men through solid objects. Like a bank vault.
The Philadelphia Project; U.S.S. Eldridge and Project Rainbow
The Philadelphia Experiment Research Project
As with the alleged Philadelphia Experiment, the "walking through walls" thing in Fringe's "Safe" didn't exactly work out well for all those
involved. As some crewmen of the USS Eldridge reportedly disappeared and then reappeared stuck half in and half out of the ship's hull, so to did one
poor banker robber. His death resulted in one more clue for Olivia, Walter, and Peter to pick up as they attempt to find the ultimate truth about who
is behind all of these fatal scientific endeavors.
Episode 20: There is more than One of Everything
Just when we were about to get comfortable with Fringe, the season finale makes us sit back up again and question what we have already questioned,
doubt what we thought we had figured out, and reexamine the very characters we had grown to love. Our beloved mad scientist, Walter Bishop has been
harboring many secrets, secrets that won't be hid from the world any longer. Olivia is shoved down the proverbial rabbit hole and takes us, the
viewers, with her. And Peter…well, he just isn't the same man we thought he was.
Olivia's trip down the rabbit hole brings her to the man she has been searching for, William Bell. The biggest surprise of William Bell's appearance
isn't that he is played by Leonard Nimoy (though that did make us geek out, admit it), but rather that Olivia is finally introduced to Mr. Bell in
the still-standing World Trade Center.
In a parallel universe.
Perhaps that sounds more fiction than nonfiction, but parallel universes have been a widely discussed topic for decades, if not centuries, pondered by
the likes of the nah-sayers to the mathematicians, to the meditators and monks.
Parallel Universes do Exist, According to a Mathematical Discovery
NASA Satellite Finds Evidence for Parallel Universe
Thankfully, Fringe returns this fall to Fox so that we may begin the entire journey all over again with Olivia, Peter, and Walter. AboveTopSecret.com
continues on everyday, with thousands of people discussing topics generally reserved for the fringe of society, breaking through the taboo and paving
the way for what is "pseudo" today to become part of the mainstream tomorrow.
There will always be people who are more comfortable dismissing things like parallel universes as myth, those who feel safe from chemical terrorism if
we go to war, and those who refuse to deny ignorance. However, like the characters of Fringe, there will always be those people who can't help but to
think "what if", those who see past the headlines, and those who seek out the truth, even if it comes with a price.