The Machine

[Lij]

We haven't seen the original timeline. We've seen the 'right one' from Peter's POV because it's one in which he existed, but it's not in its original form, what I mean is, the timeline we've seen the past seasons had been rewritten at least twice before. Remember Walter tells Peter when Peter asks him not to send the machine in 'The Day We Died' that he can't do that because it'd be undoing something that he's already done, which means that in a previous state of the same timeline he sent the machine through the wormhole and that automatically rewrote that timeline and led them there, to that situation in which Peter stepped into the machine and destroyed the Redverse.

That isn't so much rewriting a timeline as it is recreating it.

That previous state of the timeline is what I call the original timeline, the timeline in which Walter effectively sent the machine and rewrote it for the first time.

Yes, that would be the timeline before any paradoxical elements (the wormhole, First People, etc.) were injected into "time." And I suppose that is why Peter says that Walter built the machine, however, he does not know for a fact that original timeline existed in that manner. And if it did then why should Peter not have been 'allowed' to exist in the S4 timeline? Just because he got a glimps of the future? Seems petty to me.

The one we've seen in previous seasons is a timeline rewritten at least twice, cause there's the machine buried and when Peter steps in it his consciousness is taken forward.

One would certainly think so, but as I did above you can make a case that it only happened once. IF - the beginning of the timeline started with Peter dismounting the machine in 2011. In other words it took off from the point the machines were active in the S4 timeline (which means the S4 timeline is the actual, original timeline).

In the original one, the machine is created -allegedly by Walter- in the future, we don't know exactly what year, presumably 2026. When he sends it the timeline rewrites itself. But it's not like going back in time, they actually don't go through everything all over again. Imagine something happens in the past that alters your present reality.

Yeah, I get that. But I think in a spiralling paradox scenario as you describe it (and I call it), pretty much everything does have to happen about the same way. Changes are supposed to be minor (thus the Observers). The real problem is that somehow Peter is supposed to choose Olivia in the Bluverse. The question is then, how? How does he become aware of her if he was meant to be cured in the Redverse? Something we didn't see from a previous iteration of the paradoxical loop (that's what I call them instead of timelines) or was September just as fated to make his mistake as we saw in S1-3? My point is that September could only make that mistake and did so only once because the paradoxical loop only occurred once. Further from the comic if Peter2026 was the one who always took the machine pieces back in time then he was also always fated to meet up with September in 2011 and have his walkabout through time and meet up with his 2011 self who was then in the machine.

Anyway, back on topic: he sent the machine, the reality changes, there's a machine that can both create and destroy, but it's not enough, cause they don't have enough information and Peter ends up destroying the Redverse, in this 'second' timeline/once rewritten timeline. We take a peek to this timeline in 'The Day We Died.' We see that sending the machine was not enough, so Peter and Walter find a way to send Peter's consciousness forward when he steps in the machine, say they fix something when they're about to send the machine so that when it's rewritten again the reality changes again. That's the timeline we've seen. One that's been rewritten at least twice. Also it's a timeline in which Peter's existence depends exclusively on the fact that the observer saved him and Walter from drowning in the frozen lake.

So the first time it goes back in the wormhole you would have to say that methodology used was different than the second time. How could it be anything else if the First People information must be 'created' in that first iteration. The problem though is how do they know where to place the parts since they didn't dig them up in the first place? Nor did they know about what happened to Peter (or was it someone else?) in placing the machine parts (as seen in the comic). One would have to make it up as they go along (although I will admit that might have been what Peter was doing in the comic with his journal). Plus if you read the comic the universe had to split into Bluverse and Redverse sometime after 1783. Maybe it had something to do with the American Revolution?

But in the original timeline, in one that hasn't been previously modified, ever before (at least not by regular humans; again there's always the observers, of course), in the one Walter creates the machine (to then send it for the first time) Peter had to exist. He couldn't have possibly built it without him because the machine is based on him, on his DNA. His existence then was a fact. What happened after the timeline was rewritten that turned him into a time paradox? we don't know..

Unless....Walter used his DNA to create the machine in the original one (?) and what the machine reacts to is in fact the Y chromosome which is what fathers pass to their sons hence why Walternate could use baby Henry to turn it on on his side(?)

But then of course if he used his DNA to build it that means he could have stepped into it and not use his son right?

This is where we differ. In my way of thinking about the S4 timeline as the original "rational reality" and the machine does not have to be keyed to anyone. Also I hold to the idea that it was William Bell who built both a Bluverse and Redverse machine (so far we do not know). The "lore" that it was keyed to Peter comes out of the paradox itself. And I see the paradox completely differently not as a creation of the wormhole but as a creation of the machine itself (when turned on in the rational reality of S4). Thus I see Peter himself as being created by the machine along with the paradox. I think that is why he was not supposed to be extant in the S4 timeline (Rational Reality). In fact, Peter has described himself as a paradox in one episode this season. It seems Peter is as confused about things as everyone else!

My point about this is how do you change the past (as seen in S4) when there was no overt act which could have done so? There was no wormhole, there was only the machine in 2011. Did it retroactively recreate the past? This is quite the same I have it doing with the paradox. Except for the past to be recreated in S4 is instituting paradoxical elements in all timelines while as I would have it S4/Rational Reality would be without any overarching paradoxical element. All such paradoxical elements would have been confined to the paradox itself which no longer exists.

But we'll see. I really wish we would have seen 4.08 before the break, I really want to know what September has to say to Olivia. Although I have this feeling that their meeting as seen in the teaser is going to be nothing but a teaser for the next episode. A cliffhanger that would have taken us into the holiday break.

[fringeG33k]

We've seen the machine and the bridge-room/nexus and Astrid said Walternate turned on his machine intent on destroying the Bluverse but the bridge-room/nexus popped into existence instead. So yeah, the machine has shut down.

Are you sure that's not an assumption? I got the impression the machine could be on because in the first episode of S4 I thought the weird guy in the hallways was looking at the machine's specs while running because of the image and the fluctuating percentages he was looking at. Also when Lincoln and Olivia stepped into the bridge room there was some big machine-like humming in the background, so that's why I'm wondering if its still running. I don't recall any of the characters saying it was ever turned off, just on. I can see it being possible that it is still on if when it got turned on it created a bridge and they just don't want to mess with universes breaking down any further.

And in reviewing the comic I don't think it was Peter who fixed the machine piece, it was probably the woman in Hy-Brasil. She walked up with the machine piece and said about it, "it is easy to fix if you know how." Obviously Hy-Brasil is in the future and they have knowledge of the machine. Now it could be that the Observers are from that future time of Hy-Brasil.

Well I guess that's my assumption that they showed Peter how they fixed it. I guess we'll see!

[Olive_Dunham]

That isn't so much rewriting a timeline as it is recreating it.

What do you mean by recreating it?
You mean...that a new timeline starts every time they change something?

Yes, that would be the timeline before any paradoxical elements (the wormhole, First People, etc.) were injected into "time." And I suppose that is why Peter says that Walter built the machine, however, he does not know for a fact that original timeline existed in that manner. And if it did then why should Peter not have been 'allowed' to exist in the S4 timeline? Just because he got a glimps of the future? Seems petty to me.

I suppose they have better reasons... Nevertheless, the fact that he got a glimpse of the future can be pretty troubling, not because of what he saw per se, but because of how that might affect his future decisions. One of the decisions he's made after getting off the machine, the decision to create the bridge and not destroy the Redverse, for instance, changed or will change the future. I guess that's what they were going after when The First People schemed this whole thing. This one man was allowed to see the future because apparently it's the only way to save both worlds. I however don't think it's something neither the observers nor the First People or whoever planned this approve of. I guess they just had no other choice...

One would certainly think so, but as I did above you can make a case that it only happened once. IF - the beginning of the timeline started with Peter dismounting the machine in 2011. In other words it took off from the point the machines were active in the S4 timeline (which means the S4 timeline is the actual, original timeline).



Yeah, I get that. But I think in a spiralling paradox scenario as you describe it (and I call it), pretty much everything does have to happen about the same way. Changes are supposed to be minor (thus the Observers). The real problem is that somehow Peter is supposed to choose Olivia in the Bluverse. The question is then, how? How does he become aware of her if he was meant to be cured in the Redverse? Something we didn't see from a previous iteration of the paradoxical loop (that's what I call them instead of timelines) or was September just as fated to make his mistake as we saw in S1-3? My point is that September could only make that mistake and did so only once because the paradoxical loop only occurred once. Further from the comic if Peter2026 was the one who always took the machine pieces back in time then he was also always fated to meet up with September in 2011 and have his walkabout through time and meet up with his 2011 self who was then in the machine.


So the first time it goes back in the wormhole you would have to say that methodology used was different than the second time. How could it be anything else if the First People information must be 'created' in that first iteration. The problem though is how do they know where to place the parts since they didn't dig them up in the first place? Nor did they know about what happened to Peter (or was it someone else?) in placing the machine parts (as seen in the comic). One would have to make it up as they go along (although I will admit that might have been what Peter was doing in the comic with his journal). Plus if you read the comic the universe had to split into Bluverse and Redverse sometime after 1783. Maybe it had something to do with the American Revolution?

Well maybe it wasn't another piece they sent... maybe it was something else.
After giving it some thought, and as you well said, it probably wasn't.
Though I truly wonder... how did they know where the pieces where gonna end up buried when they designed the first people calendar and where do those numbers came from, the number stations?
But leaving that aside... Maybe it wasn't so much a new piece of the machine or some setting but a procedure, maybe it was written on the 'new' sketch Sam Weiss and Olivia found. We don't know that for sure.
I noticed that said sketch, the one of Olivia's face could have been sent in the future we've seen... Cause when Walter is released to help stop Moreau and Olivia visits him and she pulls out some weird telekinesis thing, Walter is shocked. Which means that probably when Peter destroyed the Redverse the people there had not turned on the machine. What I mean is, if the people on the other side had turned it on first, Olivia would have had to turn it off before Peter stepped into it. And if she had, if she had turned off a monstrous machine in another universe, then Walter wouldn't have been so surprised she managed to do that or control her abilities I guess.
It also could have been in the tea Bellivia offered Peter. William Bell loves to put weird things in one's cup! I wouldn't be surprised if someone told me the reason Peter saw the future is because Bell gave him something. And he had to be back for a reason other than hitting on Astrid right?

As for Peter, we don't know what happened before. All we know is that apparently Peter was supposed to live and September made the mistake of distracting Walter not letting him see that he had found the cure only it needed to be stabilized. We don't know if the observer made that mistake other times. I'd tend to believe he didn't.
But who knows maybe it was indeed red Peter the one who'd survive... Knowing Walter, he'd have kidnapped him anyway... I think he softened after the fire in the lab and 17 years in Saint Claire's, after realizing his wife had committed suicide and his son had run away and he was alone locked in a padded cell completely forgotten.

This is where we differ. In my way of thinking about the S4 timeline as the original "rational reality" and the machine does not have to be keyed to anyone. Also I hold to the idea that it was William Bell who built both a Bluverse and Redverse machine (so far we do not know). The "lore" that it was keyed to Peter comes out of the paradox itself. And I see the paradox completely differently not as a creation of the wormhole but as a creation of the machine itself (when turned on in the rational reality of S4). Thus I see Peter himself as being created by the machine along with the paradox. I think that is why he was not supposed to be extant in the S4 timeline (Rational Reality). In fact, Peter has described himself as a paradox in one episode this season. It seems Peter is as confused about things as everyone else!

My point about this is how do you change the past (as seen in S4) when there was no overt act which could have done so? There was no wormhole, there was only the machine in 2011. Did it retroactively recreate the past? This is quite the same I have it doing with the paradox. Except for the past to be recreated in S4 is instituting paradoxical elements in all timelines while as I would have it S4/Rational Reality would be without any overarching paradoxical element. All such paradoxical elements would have been confined to the paradox itself which no longer exists.

But we'll see. I really wish we would have seen 4.08 before the break, I really want to know what September has to say to Olivia. Although I have this feeling that their meeting as seen in the teaser is going to be nothing but a teaser for the next episode. A cliffhanger that would have taken us into the holiday break.

That's interesting^^
I agree that in this timeline the machines aren't linked to anyone in particular, or weren't linked to anyone they knew; now that Peter's here we don't know...The problem is where did the machines come from in this timeline, where did they get the pieces from? I take it they weren't buried somewhere cause in theory now the devices only keep the bridge stable and therefore there's no catastrophic future ahead, no wormholes, no nothing. So who built it? How did they find it?
I remember Nina said it was indeed Bell's technology but we haven't heard of him in a long time, I don't think he'll be back either so...
Now if in the next episodes we hear the pieces of the machines were in fact buried then that means in a near future one of the two universes will break the truce and turn it on... again that shouldn't happen but there also shouldn't be Peter, yet here he is. And he's about to cross over to meet Walternate. That can't be good

[Joe Curwen]

I've been trying to catch up on some threads, read through this one and I'll throw this idea out there.

First, let's note that Fringe is one part fringe science and nine parts writers' fiat. The multiple paradoxes you name in this thread are purely the result of the latter. In fringe science as in nature, there can be no paradoxes.

The tiny little fringe science part of what we saw in the Season Three finale can be explained by The Novikov Principle. This principle states that a time traveler can change the past, provided that it is completely consistent with the present. One subtlety of this idea is that while the present time is fixed at each moment, the past is surprisingly negotiable. This is what we are dealing with.

So. At the very end of the S3 finale, we saw a machine, a bridge, various people and their alternates plus Peter, who was blathering on about something. At that moment, September decided to change the past and let Peter drown in 1985. Peter disappears. But the Novikov Principle tells us that changes in the past cannot change the present. Thus, in the present time, you still have a room, a machine, a bridge connecting the two worlds, and two Olivias staring at each other. This constituted the present that could not be changed. And because the present was so fixed, a new past was instantly selected from a whole range of possible pasts that was a) consistent with this new present time and b) the least energetically disruptive - this is the Novikov Effect in action. The present is the only thing that matters. The big outline of the old past and the new past will remain economically consistent with it. If Olivia is stuck with her double in a room and a machine and a bridge, then her past will have led her there. One possible past had a Peter who led her there. Another possible past got her there there in another way. And so it goes.*

From this, we see that the writers did not think of Time as looping. Time behaved in a linear fashion. You can rewind the linear tape of time and record a new song over the old, provided that the head ends up in the same place for the next track. These little details wouldn't matter, except that we need to think of it this way because of what they decided to do this season. Because time is linear, and because they introduced the idea in Season 2/3 that the brain is a recording device akin to mag tape, we should expect that the memories of the previously selected past are still present in Olivia's brain, and with the right technique or stimulus, they can be recovered.

Lastly, this thread demonstrates that while you can select and define the paradoxes present in the story in any way you choose, you cannot eliminate them. All you can do is shift them around. This means that no matter what the writers do going forward, there are going to be things which cannot, by definition, be explained logically. Paradoxes in stories come from the outside - the writers - and cannot be explained within the story. They are there to serve the story. All you can do is note them and then shrug them off.





*Please note that I am taking huge liberties with the base idea of the Novikov effect as I'm allowing for some artistic license with the actual idea or principle, which is par for the course on Fringe.

--
Joe

[Walter'sWalk]

I've been trying to catch up on some threads, read through this one and I'll throw this idea out there.

First, let's note that Fringe is one part fringe science and nine parts writers' fiat. The multiple paradoxes you name in this thread are purely the result of the latter. In fringe science as in nature, there can be no paradoxes.

The tiny little fringe science part of what we saw in the Season Three finale can be explained by The Novikov Principle. This principle states that a time traveler can change the past, provided that it is completely consistent with the present. One subtlety of this idea is that while the present time is fixed at each moment, the past is surprisingly negotiable. This is what we are dealing with.

So. At the very end of the S3 finale, we saw a machine, a bridge, various people and their alternates plus Peter, who was blathering on about something. At that moment, September decided to change the past and let Peter drown in 1985. Peter disappears. But the Novikov Principle tells us that changes in the past cannot change the present. Thus, in the present time, you still have a room, a machine, a bridge connecting the two worlds, and two Olivias staring at each other. This constituted the present that could not be changed. And because the present was so fixed, a new past was instantly selected from a whole range of possible pasts that was a) consistent with this new present time and b) the least energetically disruptive - this is the Novikov Effect in action. The present is the only thing that matters. The big outline of the old past and the new past will remain economically consistent with it. If Olivia is stuck with her double in a room and a machine and a bridge, then her past will have led her there. One possible past had a Peter who led her there. Another possible past got her there there in another way. And so it goes.*

From this, we see that the writers did not think of Time as looping. Time behaved in a linear fashion. You can rewind the linear tape of time and record a new song over the old, provided that the head ends up in the same place for the next track. These little details wouldn't matter, except that we need to think of it this way because of what they decided to do this season. Because time is linear, and because they introduced the idea in Season 2/3 that the brain is a recording device akin to mag tape, we should expect that the memories of the previously selected past are still present in Olivia's brain, and with the right technique or stimulus, they can be recovered.

Lastly, this thread demonstrates that while you can select and define the paradoxes present in the story in any way you choose, you cannot eliminate them. All you can do is shift them around. This means that no matter what the writers do going forward, there are going to be things which cannot, by definition, be explained logically. Paradoxes in stories come from the outside - the writers - and cannot be explained within the story. They are there to serve the story. All you can do is note them and then shrug them off.





*Please note that I am taking huge liberties with the base idea of the Novikov effect as I'm allowing for some artistic license with the actual idea or principle, which is par for the course on Fringe.

--
Joe

Really good post, Joe. If the writers explained the machine and what happened in the show via Novikov in the same way you just did, I wouldn't feel all that let down or cheated. However, they'd definitely need to reference baby Henry and how he also flashed out of existence just like Peter. If the writers never bring up baby Henry again and the fact that he also existed at some point, whatever they do probably won't cut it in terms of explaining how everything fits. Most likely it'll still be a paradoxical cluster-f, but as long as it's not all that bad and baby Henry is part of the answer, I might be cool with it.

[dALTnielle]

We haven't seen the original timeline. We've seen the 'right one' from Peter's POV because it's one in which he existed, but it's not in its original form, what I mean is, the timeline we've seen the past seasons had been rewritten at least twice before. Remember Walter tells Peter when Peter asks him not to send the machine in 'The Day We Died' that he can't do that because it'd be undoing something that he's already done, which means that in a previous state of the same timeline he sent the machine through the wormhole and that automatically rewrote that timeline and led them there, to that situation in which Peter stepped into the machine and destroyed the Redverse.
That previous state of the timeline is what I call the original timeline, the timeline in which Walter effectively sent the machine and rewrote it for the first time.
The one we've seen in previous seasons is a timeline rewritten at least twice, cause there's the machine buried and when Peter steps in it his consciousness is taken forward.

In the original one, the machine is created -allegedly by Walter- in the future, we don't know exactly what year, presumably 2026. When he sends it the timeline rewrites itself. But it's not like going back in time, they actually don't go through everything all over again. Imagine something happens in the past that alters your present reality. Suppose one person gets killed in a car accident cause the driver is having a heart attack while driving. Now suppose too, that in the future you send back in time through a wormhole that opens up somewhere the blueprints of a device that helps prevent and cure any heart disease long before any symptom shows. You won't go back in time like when Alistair Peck sort of 'rewound' the timeline but that thing you sent back in time will change the past and subsequently the present reality. Imagine that now that there's this new diagnose device the doctors would detect and cure any problem the driver might have had while driving, resulting in the driver being healthy and whoever got killed being now safe and sound. You won't see all that happen, but you'll see a new reality in which both the driver and this random person are alive
Anyway, back on topic: he sent the machine, the reality changes, there's a machine that can both create and destroy, but it's not enough, cause they don't have enough information and Peter ends up destroying the Redverse, in this 'second' timeline/once rewritten timeline. We take a peek to this timeline in 'The Day We Died.' We see that sending the machine was not enough, so Peter and Walter find a way to send Peter's consciousness forward when he steps in the machine, say they fix something when they're about to send the machine so that when it's rewritten again the reality changes again. That's the timeline we've seen. One that's been rewritten at least twice. Also it's a timeline in which Peter's existence depends exclusively on the fact that the observer saved him and Walter from drowning in the frozen lake.

But in the original timeline, in one that hasn't been previously modified, ever before (at least not by regular humans; again there's always the observers, of course), in the one Walter creates the machine (to then send it for the first time) Peter had to exist. He couldn't have possibly built it without him because the machine is based on him, on his DNA. His existence then was a fact. What happened after the timeline was rewritten that turned him into a time paradox? we don't know..

Unless....Walter used his DNA to create the machine in the original one (?) and what the machine reacts to is in fact the Y chromosome which is what fathers pass to their sons hence why Walternate could use baby Henry to turn it on on his side(?)

But then of course if he used his DNA to build it that means he could have stepped into it and not use his son right?

So maybe Peter's consciousness wasn't forwarded to the future of the iteration we saw in S1-3, but to the future of a previous iteration, so not forwarded, but sent to another iteration/dimension. At the end of the first iteration they created the machine and sent it back, the second iteration began and ended up with Olivia being shot (what we saw in TDWD), Walter modified the machine so that Peter would have the ability to see what happened here and sent it back, the third iteration began, in 2011 Peter got in the modified machine, saw what happened in a previous iteration (now the machine has this possibility, unlike the previous one) and decided to create the bridge. Now, another iteration/timeline/dimension (I don't even know how to call them anymore ) of the same universe when both Peters died as children.
So they are all the same people, they just don't have memory about all the previous dimensions. But this timeline doesn't really work for neither of them. Olivia and Walter miss Peter (although they don't have memory of him, they just feel the gap he left), Peter wants to be with them, so he appears in this timeline also (he pushes, they pull), although he shouldn't have. This is his home, this Universe, in all it's dimensions. So they are going to rewrite the timeline again or something. This sacrifice doesn't work for any of them. And Sept knows that... that's why he chose not to delete him for good.
The other people cannot change what happened, but Peter can make a different choice within what happened. He has this power.
.... Or something ....

[Residents Fan]

I

The tiny little fringe science part of what we saw in the Season Three finale can be explained by The Novikov Principle. This principle states that a time traveler can change the past, provided that it is completely consistent with the present. One subtlety of this idea is that while the present time is fixed at each moment, the past is surprisingly negotiable. This is what we are dealing with.

So. At the very end of the S3 finale, we saw a machine, a bridge, various people and their alternates plus Peter, who was blathering on about something. At that moment, September decided to change the past and let Peter drown in 1985. Peter disappears. But the Novikov Principle tells us that changes in the past cannot change the present. Thus, in the present time, you still have a room, a machine, a bridge connecting the two worlds, and two Olivias staring at each other. This constituted the present that could not be changed. And because the present was so fixed, a new past was instantly selected from a whole range of possible pasts that was a) consistent with this new present time and b) the least energetically disruptive - this is the Novikov Effect in action. The present is the only thing that matters. The big outline of the old past and the new past will remain economically consistent with it. If Olivia is stuck with her double in a room and a machine and a bridge, then her past will have led her there. One possible past had a Peter who led her there. Another possible past got her there there in another way. And so it goes.*

From this, we see that the writers did not think of Time as looping. Time behaved in a linear fashion. You can rewind the linear tape of time and record a new song over the old, provided that the head ends up in the same place for the next track. These little details wouldn't matter, except that we need to think of it this way because of what they decided to do this season. Because time is linear, and because they introduced the idea in Season 2/3 that the brain is a recording device akin to mag tape, we should expect that the memories of the previously selected past are still present in Olivia's brain, and with the right technique or stimulus, they can be recovered.

That's very clever theory Joe , and it does seem to explain a lot of the puzzling stuff floating around Peter vanishing from the time-line.

[dutchguy]

I believe both Joe Curwen and psychopathicROC are on the same path. When I combine both your theories it makes even more sense, yet more questions arise.

@Joe Curwen.. your theory starts at the point that the observer DID rescue Peter from the lake.

There must have been another time-line before that where the observer did NOT do this and chose to dive after Peter.
That is as I believe more like the 'original' time-line from psychopatichROC's theory.
I'm not sure when in that original time-line September made that choice? But I strongly believe that he used Peter to correct something.

The one observer 'September?' had to correct something on his own that he had caused. Now I am not sure if that was the rescue of Peter.
Could the rescue merely have been the means to correct it all?

[psychopathicROC]

If i'm being repetetive, i'm sorry - I post in a lot of random threads.

In my ideas, there are three or four timelines that matter.

There was an original timeline, where there was no war or kidnapping; Red Peter grows to be a great man, the machine is built, and an alliance formed between the two universes in order to stop the damage. They are too late, which leads to the wormhole and First People in an attempt to allow the machine to fix the damage in the 2000s instead of 2026, before the damage is irrepairable. This leads directly to

Timeline #2, which is interrupted before it *happens*..... Peter's cure leads to the alliance of the universes, and the discovery and reconstruction of the machine (as opposed to the years of research, development and experimentation) would allow the worlds to be saved. The cure is a grand moment. September is there to observe.

BOOM. Interference. Instant Chaos. September moves quickly to rescue Peter from drowning which sets up the...

Time Loop. Timeline #3-X. Repeated countless times around the loop (iterations) with subtle manipulations (possibly from William Bell and his soul magnets, possibly from each version of Peter leaving an imprint on the next version of Peter) until they finally got it right. Peter from the most recent iteration of the loop (S1-S3 Peter) is protected from the changes by his presence in the machine. But in the moment of his success.... the bridge is formed..... "His Purpose is served. He is no longer needed." The Observers attempt to remove any knowledge of their interference by removing the threat - September no longer saves Peter at Reiden Lake, causing yet another new timeline... the one we see now, devoid of Peter's influence, as he now died as a child. Peter, still being protected from the rewrite in the machine, punches through with Olivia and/or Subject 9's help, leading to where we are now.

We are still in the same physical space/time as the Blueverse and the Redverse. The tape has just been rewritten many times.

Some pieces of the previous timelines still exist buried deep beneath the "top layer", the current timeline. These can bleed through in various ways, including
- William Bell being self aware of what has happened in the past, tapping into those other layers through drugs and science. "I have seen history repeat itself enough times.."
- Peter having a stray memory of Walter's that he shouldn't have had in S1
- Olivia bleeding into the "alternate universe" in S1, complete with cortexiphan trials and an FBI - definately NOT the red verse
- Olivia's current dreams
- the key to bringing "our beloved characters" into the new timeline without compromising all of the development and contrasting they have been building this Season.