Astrid enters the scene with Ziggy Stardust crooning in her ear.
Walter’s in a good mood, seventies glam means he’s feeling feisty, he reserves the turntable, the glorious strands of an orchestra, for when he’s set on science.
Olivia turns with a small two-fingered wave, a brief acknowledgment of her head.
She’s engaged with a knot of men, their hard-hats marking them as either construction workers or members of the municipal council. Astrid turns her eyes from the small group and follows her nose, striding down the incline to where the mouth of a storm drain maws open – wet and dank - the air degrees cooler than the plains of South Dakota, from the morning heat rising from the pavement.
“Agent Dunham said you should wait.” One of the worker’s calls out, sliding down the loose gravel as he hurries to catch up. He has a flashlight in one hand, face shadowed by his hat.
“There weren’t no DJ that was a hazy cosmic jive,” Walter mutters in her ear.
Astrid croons in perfect harmony. “There’s a starman waiting in the sky. He’d like to come meet us, but he thinks he’ll blow our minds.”
The construction worker, Astrid reads, isn’t a Ziggy Stardust fan. He holds up his flashlight and flicks it on, eyes darting over Astrid’s form dubiously.
“The object is a fair distance down the rabbit-hole, miss. We left it untouched as per the FBI’s instructions, but there’s a fair amount of damage done to the structural integrity of the tunnel.”
“Safe for entry?”
“At the moment. The storm drain backs into a sewer line at the halfway mark. I hope you brought your gumboots.”
Of course, Astrid thinks, a little sourly and resigns herself to rolling up her trouser legs.
There’s a smattering of freckles on his face, ginger lashes so pale they appear non-existent. His nose is crooked from an old break, teeth white and pointed, crowded together in his mouth like a rat. “John Burkner,” he introduces.
“He’s not right for you,” Walter says instantly.
Astrid smiles as she turns away, letting the camera drop from the man’s line of sight. “You say that about everyone.”
“I’m sorry?” Burkner says blankly.
Astrid taps her ear in explanation, her shoulder rising in a shrug. “Talking to the monkey on my back.”
“That’s impolite!” Walter admonishes.
Burkner spits, a bloody pulp of tobacco that stains the ground red as he shrugs.
At the entry to the drain the air smells like decaying fruit, a veil of skin that a finger could push through. The hairs on Astrid’s arms stand on end. She watches patiently as Olivia leaves the group of men and skids down the embankment, leading foot extended, her rear foot turned at an angle to slow her descent. She hits the bottom with a little skip and strolls forward, her gait the curious mixture of rolling hips and purpose.
“We should stop by the Hot Springs on the way back,” Walter says absently. “I always meant to go.”
“I’m not going to the Hot Springs with a video camera, Walter.”
“Why not?”
“There’s a good chance I’ll be arrested.”
“It’s not that type of Hot Spring,” Walter corrects, sounding dismayed. “And this generation is far too prudish.”
Olivia brushes Astrid’s spine in greeting, low in the s-curve, before she focuses her attention on Burkner. “I understand you’re escorting us to the location?”
There’s the sound of crashing in the lab, of bottles being overturned. Astrid, accustomed to multi-tasking, to listening to three separate conversations while stirring the custard and prodding at body parts, divides her attention between Olivia, Walter, and the equipment in her hands.
Burkner, she notes, seems a little flustered. “Right this way.”
Olivia follows him into the tunnel, her voice tight with exhaustion. “It’s the last set of co-ordinates for the machine.”
She shines a penlight onto Astrid’s monitor, illuminating the screen in the growing darkness. Her face looks pinched in the dim light; her cheekbones cut high, a glacial slope of honeyed skin. Olivia’s been obsessed since her return from the other side, scrambling to catch up to Walternate’s plans. She changes the frequency of her radio to coincide with Walter’s and hovers close to Astrid’s side.
“It’s the oldest, too.”
South Dakota was the last of the twenty-two co-ordinates Astrid unscrambled from the number station code, (the First People Code, Walter sometimes calls it, or Watson’s Wonder when he’s feeling indulgent). It’s the last in numerical order, the oldest. The first piece of machinery to be buried beneath the topsoil - lost over ten thousand years ago in the Pleistocene era.
“The Dakota Hot Springs are a Woolley Mammoth site,” Walter prattles in the background, nearly inaudible. “The springs are the resting site of a fossilised herd. Did you know when the first skeletal remains of the Woolley Mammoth were uncovered in Siberia it was thought the giant beasts lived underground? That they only came to the surface of the earth to die, poisoned by a sky they couldn’t breathe; imagine, an animal that size living like a mole rat? The locals thought the Mammoth herds were responsible for the earthquakes and the shaking of the trees, that the soil only trembled when they were running underground.” Walter sounds delighted, *young*, his voice tipping into full on lecture mode before he concludes softly. “Myth, first impressions, they were utterly wrong. The first Woolley Mammoth emerged from the ground fully formed after the permafrost retreated. I think he would have wanted to see them.”
Astrid double-checks the equipment.
There’s a low vibration, emitting at two megahertz then again at five, repeating at random intervals. Unlike any other segment they’ve collected so far, it’s as if the last piece of machinery *wants* to be found. Seismic activity caved parts of the tunnel in a week ago. Watching the needle as it fluctuates, Astrid wonders if maybe it wasn’t something else that collapsed the tunnel - that tore up the floor and exploded from underground.
“He wanted to be a brontosaurus when he was a boy, but that may have been the medication speaking…he always had a deplorable lack of tolerance for it.”
It’s Olivia who answers. Astrid can hear the smile in her voice, the low warmth as she teases. “It sounds like he took after his mother.”
“In all the right ways.”
Walter doesn’t speak about his son often and only ever to Olivia. Astrid’s heard Peter mentioned by name twice in three years and saw a photograph once. She doesn’t interrupt as he reminisces. Since Olivia’s return from the other side, the dirt’s been shaken loose from Peter’s skeleton, pushing to the surface of Walter’s waking thoughts.
It’s good for him, to let the memory breathe, to let him live again.
The first time Astrid met Walter Bishop; he was holding onto Olivia’s forearm with both hands, walking from the institution side by side. His eyes were squeezed shut, trusting Olivia to guide him past the unruly snowdrifts, the treacherous ice. His shoulders were hunched protectively, the wind dropping the temperature to perilous cold. To Astrid’s eye he looked more than frail. He looked ancient.
Astrid was in the car with the heater on full blast. She noted their off-kilter stride, walking as if tied together in a three-legged race and mistook Walter for visually impaired. She stepped onto the road, door wide open, to assist.
He flailed the very second Astrid touched him.
Startled, his eyes snapped open, mouth twisting in a snarl. In hindsight, it wasn’t an attack but an uncoordinated strike of limbs and surprise. She remembers being pushed, the sickening recollection of a car hurtling down the street.
She landed on her derriere in the middle of the road, teeth clacking together, the seat of her pants cold through. She remembers Olivia’s drawn in breath, the way her body had coiled for action; the way Walter’s eyes widened, then Astrid *scrambled*. Rolling onto her knees she dove forward, hitting the curb as the vehicle screamed by in a rush of red metal, close enough she could have kissed it.
It was her first meeting with Walter Bishop and she thought; heart galloping fast in her chest, as first impressions went it wasn’t an auspicious start. It was the first time; the last time, Walter Bishop stepped outside.
Astrid keeps an eye on the vibration and tries to figure out the quickest route to the Hot Springs from their current location. Once they confirm it’s a piece of ancient machinery in the tunnel and *after* they make arrangements to have it transported out, they might have available time to see it.
She wants to bring South Dakota’s horizon to Walter’s dark monitor, to his basement lab, squirreled underground like the legends of the Woolly Mammoths. She wants him to understand some things shouldn’t be given up or turned away. Some things (sunshine, light, air, second chances) should never be shunned.
Astrid had zero experience with mental illness when she began work at Fringe, she had no understanding of the complex relationship, the experiments, Walter once performed and Olivia was subjected to. But she understood blame. She understood life was a series of mistakes, wondrous detours.
Astrid took a chance on a friend who was grievously injured, who didn’t trust men. Her memories of Suzy are infused with confessions, with soft touches, whispered hurts, with intimacy and laughter and finding something infinitely precious. She remembers the way Suzy used to regard her and Astrid thought….misconstrued…
It had been five years since the rape and Suzy had yet to date a single boy. She’d sleep in Astrid’s hammock, her summer dress hitched high, the two of them curling toward one another, cradled close.
Astrid took a chance and found out she was entirely wrong.
She has that in common with Walter, with the entire human race, but there’s a bravery in the effort; in the reckless abandon, even if what they’re reaching for is nothing but gossamer dreams.
“You tried to take advantage of me,” Suzy accused, voice edged with truth.
Horrified, Astrid said. “I wanted to take a risk *with* you.” She felt sick, hollowed out, and her words, intentions, were as equally true. It was an innocent kiss, under the oak tree in the hammock: it was the death of her oldest friendship. Getting it utterly wrong is the first point of commonality in the human experience, navigating the consequences is where the stories lay.
She hears Olivia’s low laugh, genuine and unaffected, the easy camaraderie between Walter and the senior agent evident.
All those years ago, when she saw Olivia and Walter, when she tried to imagine the complex tapestry they made together, Astrid forgot to include her own strands amongst the complex pattern they wove. Coiled, looped, bolstering each other up. Three years later with enough distance between now and then, the overall picture is beautiful, spilling down Olivia’s castle walls, keeping the drafts out and changing the landscape from hospital grey to mellow gold.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: Now and Then - or how the Woolley Mammoth was Completely Wrong 3/3. Gen. Astrid, Walter
Date: 2011-12-21 10:14 pm (UTC)______________
Astrid enters the scene with Ziggy Stardust crooning in her ear.
Walter’s in a good mood, seventies glam means he’s feeling feisty, he reserves the turntable, the glorious strands of an orchestra, for when he’s set on science.
Olivia turns with a small two-fingered wave, a brief acknowledgment of her head.
She’s engaged with a knot of men, their hard-hats marking them as either construction workers or members of the municipal council. Astrid turns her eyes from the small group and follows her nose, striding down the incline to where the mouth of a storm drain maws open – wet and dank - the air degrees cooler than the plains of South Dakota, from the morning heat rising from the pavement.
“Agent Dunham said you should wait.” One of the worker’s calls out, sliding down the loose gravel as he hurries to catch up. He has a flashlight in one hand, face shadowed by his hat.
“There weren’t no DJ that was a hazy cosmic jive,” Walter mutters in her ear.
Astrid croons in perfect harmony. “There’s a starman waiting in the sky. He’d like to come meet us, but he thinks he’ll blow our minds.”
The construction worker, Astrid reads, isn’t a Ziggy Stardust fan. He holds up his flashlight and flicks it on, eyes darting over Astrid’s form dubiously.
“The object is a fair distance down the rabbit-hole, miss. We left it untouched as per the FBI’s instructions, but there’s a fair amount of damage done to the structural integrity of the tunnel.”
“Safe for entry?”
“At the moment. The storm drain backs into a sewer line at the halfway mark. I hope you brought your gumboots.”
Of course, Astrid thinks, a little sourly and resigns herself to rolling up her trouser legs.
There’s a smattering of freckles on his face, ginger lashes so pale they appear non-existent. His nose is crooked from an old break, teeth white and pointed, crowded together in his mouth like a rat. “John Burkner,” he introduces.
“He’s not right for you,” Walter says instantly.
Astrid smiles as she turns away, letting the camera drop from the man’s line of sight. “You say that about everyone.”
“I’m sorry?” Burkner says blankly.
Astrid taps her ear in explanation, her shoulder rising in a shrug. “Talking to the monkey on my back.”
“That’s impolite!” Walter admonishes.
Burkner spits, a bloody pulp of tobacco that stains the ground red as he shrugs.
At the entry to the drain the air smells like decaying fruit, a veil of skin that a finger could push through. The hairs on Astrid’s arms stand on end. She watches patiently as Olivia leaves the group of men and skids down the embankment, leading foot extended, her rear foot turned at an angle to slow her descent. She hits the bottom with a little skip and strolls forward, her gait the curious mixture of rolling hips and purpose.
“We should stop by the Hot Springs on the way back,” Walter says absently. “I always meant to go.”
“I’m not going to the Hot Springs with a video camera, Walter.”
“Why not?”
“There’s a good chance I’ll be arrested.”
“It’s not that type of Hot Spring,” Walter corrects, sounding dismayed. “And this generation is far too prudish.”
Olivia brushes Astrid’s spine in greeting, low in the s-curve, before she focuses her attention on Burkner. “I understand you’re escorting us to the location?”
There’s the sound of crashing in the lab, of bottles being overturned. Astrid, accustomed to multi-tasking, to listening to three separate conversations while stirring the custard and prodding at body parts, divides her attention between Olivia, Walter, and the equipment in her hands.
Burkner, she notes, seems a little flustered. “Right this way.”
Olivia follows him into the tunnel, her voice tight with exhaustion. “It’s the last set of co-ordinates for the machine.”
She shines a penlight onto Astrid’s monitor, illuminating the screen in the growing darkness. Her face looks pinched in the dim light; her cheekbones cut high, a glacial slope of honeyed skin. Olivia’s been obsessed since her return from the other side, scrambling to catch up to Walternate’s plans. She changes the frequency of her radio to coincide with Walter’s and hovers close to Astrid’s side.
“It’s the oldest, too.”
South Dakota was the last of the twenty-two co-ordinates Astrid unscrambled from the number station code, (the First People Code, Walter sometimes calls it, or Watson’s Wonder when he’s feeling indulgent). It’s the last in numerical order, the oldest. The first piece of machinery to be buried beneath the topsoil - lost over ten thousand years ago in the Pleistocene era.
“The Dakota Hot Springs are a Woolley Mammoth site,” Walter prattles in the background, nearly inaudible. “The springs are the resting site of a fossilised herd. Did you know when the first skeletal remains of the Woolley Mammoth were uncovered in Siberia it was thought the giant beasts lived underground? That they only came to the surface of the earth to die, poisoned by a sky they couldn’t breathe; imagine, an animal that size living like a mole rat? The locals thought the Mammoth herds were responsible for the earthquakes and the shaking of the trees, that the soil only trembled when they were running underground.” Walter sounds delighted, *young*, his voice tipping into full on lecture mode before he concludes softly. “Myth, first impressions, they were utterly wrong. The first Woolley Mammoth emerged from the ground fully formed after the permafrost retreated. I think he would have wanted to see them.”
Astrid double-checks the equipment.
There’s a low vibration, emitting at two megahertz then again at five, repeating at random intervals. Unlike any other segment they’ve collected so far, it’s as if the last piece of machinery *wants* to be found. Seismic activity caved parts of the tunnel in a week ago. Watching the needle as it fluctuates, Astrid wonders if maybe it wasn’t something else that collapsed the tunnel - that tore up the floor and exploded from underground.
“He wanted to be a brontosaurus when he was a boy, but that may have been the medication speaking…he always had a deplorable lack of tolerance for it.”
It’s Olivia who answers. Astrid can hear the smile in her voice, the low warmth as she teases. “It sounds like he took after his mother.”
“In all the right ways.”
Walter doesn’t speak about his son often and only ever to Olivia. Astrid’s heard Peter mentioned by name twice in three years and saw a photograph once. She doesn’t interrupt as he reminisces. Since Olivia’s return from the other side, the dirt’s been shaken loose from Peter’s skeleton, pushing to the surface of Walter’s waking thoughts.
It’s good for him, to let the memory breathe, to let him live again.
The first time Astrid met Walter Bishop; he was holding onto Olivia’s forearm with both hands, walking from the institution side by side. His eyes were squeezed shut, trusting Olivia to guide him past the unruly snowdrifts, the treacherous ice.
His shoulders were hunched protectively, the wind dropping the temperature to perilous cold. To Astrid’s eye he looked more than frail. He looked ancient.
Astrid was in the car with the heater on full blast. She noted their off-kilter stride, walking as if tied together in a three-legged race and mistook Walter for visually impaired. She stepped onto the road, door wide open, to assist.
He flailed the very second Astrid touched him.
Startled, his eyes snapped open, mouth twisting in a snarl. In hindsight, it wasn’t an attack but an uncoordinated strike of limbs and surprise. She remembers being pushed, the sickening recollection of a car hurtling down the street.
She landed on her derriere in the middle of the road, teeth clacking together, the seat of her pants cold through. She remembers Olivia’s drawn in breath, the way her body had coiled for action; the way Walter’s eyes widened, then Astrid *scrambled*. Rolling onto her knees she dove forward, hitting the curb as the vehicle screamed by in a rush of red metal, close enough she could have kissed it.
It was her first meeting with Walter Bishop and she thought; heart galloping fast in her chest, as first impressions went it wasn’t an auspicious start. It was the first time; the last time, Walter Bishop stepped outside.
Astrid keeps an eye on the vibration and tries to figure out the quickest route to the Hot Springs from their current location. Once they confirm it’s a piece of ancient machinery in the tunnel and *after* they make arrangements to have it transported out, they might have available time to see it.
She wants to bring South Dakota’s horizon to Walter’s dark monitor, to his basement lab, squirreled underground like the legends of the Woolly Mammoths. She wants him to understand some things shouldn’t be given up or turned away. Some things (sunshine, light, air, second chances) should never be shunned.
Astrid had zero experience with mental illness when she began work at Fringe, she had no understanding of the complex relationship, the experiments, Walter once performed and Olivia was subjected to. But she understood blame. She understood life was a series of mistakes, wondrous detours.
Astrid took a chance on a friend who was grievously injured, who didn’t trust men. Her memories of Suzy are infused with confessions, with soft touches, whispered hurts, with intimacy and laughter and finding something infinitely precious. She remembers the way Suzy used to regard her and Astrid thought….misconstrued…
It had been five years since the rape and Suzy had yet to date a single boy. She’d sleep in Astrid’s hammock, her summer dress hitched high, the two of them curling toward one another, cradled close.
Astrid took a chance and found out she was entirely wrong.
She has that in common with Walter, with the entire human race, but there’s a bravery in the effort; in the reckless abandon, even if what they’re reaching for is nothing but gossamer dreams.
“You tried to take advantage of me,” Suzy accused, voice edged with truth.
Horrified, Astrid said. “I wanted to take a risk *with* you.” She felt sick, hollowed out, and her words, intentions, were as equally true. It was an innocent kiss, under the oak tree in the hammock: it was the death of her oldest friendship. Getting it utterly wrong is the first point of commonality in the human experience, navigating the consequences is where the stories lay.
She hears Olivia’s low laugh, genuine and unaffected, the easy camaraderie between Walter and the senior agent evident.
All those years ago, when she saw Olivia and Walter, when she tried to imagine the complex tapestry they made together, Astrid forgot to include her own strands amongst the complex pattern they wove. Coiled, looped, bolstering each other up. Three years later with enough distance between now and then, the overall picture is beautiful, spilling down Olivia’s castle walls, keeping the drafts out and changing the landscape from hospital grey to mellow gold.