Children of the Cortexiphan Experiments

Children of the Cortexiphan Experiments

During one of their experiments, Dr. Bishop and Dr. Bell set up daycare centers in Wooster, Ohio and Jacksonville, Florida. The daycare centers were a guise for their true intentions, to get child test subjects for their experiments with a drug they developed called Cortexiphan. They theorized that people had infinite mental capabilities, which slowly diminished as they grew older. Cortexiphan was supposed to halt the decay of the brain and supposedly would allow them to access what they hoped would be nearly 100% of their brain capacity. 

 

A list of all the children from the
Jacksonville Cortexiphan trials
compiled by Agent Dunham

The following content is a compilation of the known Cortexiphan subjects that worked with Fringe Division.

Nick Lane

As a child, Lane was a part of the Jacksonville trials and was a close childhood friend of Agent Dunham. Dr. Bishop created a “buddy system” for the children in the trials, and while all of them grew to be friends in the program, he made sure that they created strong empathic bonds with one other individual to help them cope with any stresses the trials created.

Lane was later reunited with Agent Dunham in 2009 when he began killing people through his own emotions. His new mental capabilities had developed as what Dr. Bishop called “Reverse Empathy” or empathetic transference. After being “woken up” by a man who visited Lane in the Veteran’s Mental Hospital, he developed this ability. Lane was able to make everyone around him feel his emotions.

Lane tried to do his own detective work on the Pattern and fringe events after discovering his ability. However, after some time with no luck, Lane became depressed and suicidal, which later started to affect other people and made them kill themselves, which gained him the attention of Fringe Division. His experiences of killing these people were being transferred to Agent Dunham’s unconscious mind, leading the Fringe Team to investigate.

In the end, Lane was put into a drug-induced coma by Massive Dynamic, then taken out and trained by Massive Dynamic specialists to control his powers.

Susan Pratt

Susan and Nancy Lewis

Nancy Lewis and her twin sister Susan (who later changed her surname to Pratt) were both subjects of the Jacksonville Cortexiphan trials.

The sisters both were approached by a man called Isaac Winters who unlocked their powers. Winters was a part of the cult ZFT (see my synopsis on this). He was also working with a mole in the FBI, Sanford Harris, who abducted Nancy Lewis after she was activated in an attempt to contain her powers and turn her into a soldier for their cause.

Nancy Lewis

Susan Pratt was the one who got the attention of Fringe division by spontaneously combusting in the middle of the street.

Later the Fringe Team found that Pratt’s twin sister was Lewis, and set out to locate her before ZFT could. Unfortunately Isaac Winters found her before they could. Peter used a device he created to read the dents left by Lewis’s pyrokinesis softening the glass of her window panes and the sounds of her and Winters’ voices leaving pockets in the softened glass.

After being rescued by Agent Dunham, Lewis was taken in by Massive Dynamic and put with another girl with pyrokinesis, Sally Clark, (supposedly from the Wooster trials as her name is not on Agent Dunham’s list of children in the Jacksonville trials.)

James Heath

Heath was subject to the Jacksonville trials. After being activated by ZFT, he accidentally killed his sister Julie, who was also part of the trials. Dr. Bishop posited that Heath’s ability is a sort of energy exchange. He suffers from cancer, and can transfer his illness to other Cortexiphan subjects because they were also receptive to his energy because their brain capacities were maintained at a higher functioning state because of the drugs.

Heath’s trail of cancer ridden bodies lead the Fringe team to discover how and why he was killing other people subjected to the trials. Rather than arresting Heath, Massive Dynamic took him and trained him to heal himself and others with his powers along with Nick Lane, Sally Clark and Nancy Lewis.

Pictures of Heath's Victims
Left to Right: Julie Heath, Alan DeRosa,
Timothy Ober, Lloyd Becker, and Miranda Green

Simon Phillips

As a young boy, Phillips was taken out of the Wooster Cortexiphan trials early since he had developed the ability to read peoples’ minds. Dr. Bishop apparently had a dark secret, and was afraid Phillips would find out, so he dropped Phillips from the program.

After, Phillip’s powers of telepathy only intensified and he eventually had to isolate himself deep in the woods because the amount of input he was getting from the minds of everyone else overloaded his mind to the point of extreme pain.

Dr. Bishop requested they enlist Phillip’s help when the Fringe Team needed to extract information from a terrorist in a coma. After assisting the team, he returned to his isolated cabin because he felt people shouldn’t be able to hear the thoughts of others otherwise people would only get hurt in the end in matters of the heart.

He eventually settled down with another Cortexiphan subject and now lives with his family on his property.

Cameron James

Alias: Mark Little

James prefers to be called by his new name, Mark Little, in an attempt to separate himself from both his father (whom he was named after) and his experiences at the Wooster trials as much as possible. Little has an extreme distaste for his father because he was the one who sent him to the Bell-Bishop daycare in the first place.

When Agent Dunham was being haunted by a specter that Dr. Bishop identified as an astral projection, he theorized that it was Little, who developed the ability to astral project as a child, was responsible for the hauntings and was possibly reaching out for help.

When Agent Dunham and Dr. Bishop went to investigate, they found Little could no longer astral project and was extremely bitter with Dr. Bishop for ruining his life. Little was left with an ability that allowed him to stimulate electricity or magnetism under situations of high stress or emotional turmoil. The magnetism factor proved extremely difficult for Little because everything metal in his vicinity would go flying since he had no real control over his powers.

Dr. Bishop worked with Little to help him into a mind set that would better help him activate and control his powers to get rid of Dunham’s specter.

Little continued to dabble in his powers of magnetism and electro-kinesis until he had enough control to live the way any Cortexiphan subject appeared to have wanted to: a normal life.

Olivia Dunham

I’m sure Agent Dunham was just as surprised as I was when she discovered she was a Cortexiphan subject. Originally, Agent Dunham only displayed what Dr. Bishop now calls “Total Recall” which is a much more intriguing way of saying she has a photographic memory.

Over the course of her work with Fringe Division, Agent Dunham was often hunted down by a man called David Robert Jones, who attempted to activate her for ZFT’s purposes. He originally threatened Boston with a chemical that closed up all of the body’s orifices, killing the victim through asphyxiation.

Jones then created a bomb in a building that would spread the chemical over a large radius of the city. The only way to turn it off was to shut off all the lights on a light box connected to the bomb’s timer. Agent Dunham managed to somehow turn off the lights with her mind, according to Mr. Bishop’s account of the incident, but Agent Dunham was convinced Jones had the whole thing timed perfectly so the timer would stop when she got there and attempted to turn off the bomb.

Only when Nick Lane’s mental link reached out to Agent Dunham did Olivia’s involvement with the Jacksonville trials come to light.

Since then, it has been discovered that she has many other powers, such as pyrokinesis like the Lewis twins, telekinesis, electro-kinesis, sensory enhancement and what I can only guess is either some form of clairvoyance or something to do with this “Other Side” I find traces of in the files.

These powers have proved useful on certain Fringe events, allowing Agent Dunham to see which building would be attacked and vaporized by terrorists lead by a man named Newton. I can only theorize that she used foresight to see which building it was, or that it might have been taken to the “Other Side.”