What Child Is This

By Ellen (@fringecomix)

In the days after Etta disappeared inside it without a trace, Massive Dynamic scientists stepped in to try and analyze the machine and what had gone wrong with it, and Fringe Division did what they could to mount a search for Etta. But no one had any idea where the machine could have transported her… or if she even still existed.

Peter tore the machine apart with his bare hands, until his guilt and grief over his lost child left him unable to function.

Olivia held out hope in her belief that Etta had merely been transported to the other side. In desperation, she went to the opera house, hoping the thin spot between the universes was still there… and that somehow, there was enough ability still in her to enable her to cross over and rescue her daughter.

She could still hear Walter’s voice, telling her what to do.

“I want you to think back to when you were just young boys and girls. Think back to when your imagination could take you wherever you wanted to go. Imagine this universe slipping away, opening like a curtain. Allow the universe to pass right through you…”

For a moment, she felt she had somehow succeeded in bringing Henrietta back, and opened her eyes and called out her name.

But then her eyes readjusted to the light, and instead of Etta, she realized she was looking at a boy about her daughter’s age. A boy who looked as if every universe had passed right through him.

This picture is part of the Fringe Forward Project, an ongoing monthly series of speculative art.