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Ford stepped through the temporary wormhole he had created for himself and was surprised to come out the other side not in the midst of a gravity-free sea of lightning and swirling color, but in a large clearing in a coniferous forest of some kind. How had he missed the Nightmare Realm? It was literally the easiest dimension, for lack of a better word, to get into, since it existed in the spaces between all the other dimensions. He must not have properly deactivated the safety mechanisms intended to prevent the portal gun from connecting to the Nightmare Realm, and ended up punching straight through to the next dimension.
He didn’t have much time to puzzle over this, however, because almost immediately a hand came down on his shoulder, accompanied by a voice just familiar enough that he didn’t immediately attack the person who’d grabbed him. “You’ve got a rare treat here today folks; the elusive invisible doppelganger.” The hand on his shoulder spun him around, and Ford was confronted with the sight of his twin brother, but a strange parallel version of him, old and grey and dressed up like a carnival barker in their dad’s old suit and fez. He was speaking to a group of people, all rather… unintelligent looking, with a smattering of cameras and fanny packs and at least three Hawaiian shirts between them. “They’re normally invisible but occasionally they’ll appear in a burst of light, looking like whoever’s closest. But you can always tell who the real deal is, because they can’t get it completely right. Note the cleft chin, and the ridiculous hair,” Stan said, gesturing at Ford as he did so.
The people ohh’d and ahh’d over Stan’s nonsensical explanation for Ford’s sudden appearance. “His hair is really fluffy,” one of them commented.
“I want to touch it,” another said.
“You are not touching my hair,” Ford snapped.
Stan gave a fake and grating laugh and smacked Ford on the shoulder. “These doppelgangers can be pretty testy. Let’s move on to the next exhibit, over that way.” The people obediently shuffled off in the direction Stan pointed, and Stan turned back to look at Ford. “Yeesh, when’s the last time you washed those clothes?”
“Stan, I need to speak with you, privately,” Ford said, ignoring the question.
“I’m in the middle of a tour right now; it can wait twenty minutes. Unless it’s an emergency?” Stan asked, and from his expression Ford could tell that if he said it was, Stan would drop whatever he was doing to deal with it.
Maybe that’s why Ford found himself willing to say, “No, I don’t suppose it’s urgent.” Really, aside from the fact that this was the first time Ford had met a parallel version of his brother, this was pretty on routine for the last thirty years or so of his life.
“Alright, why don’t you go wait in the Shack? Maybe the kids can help you with whatever you’re working on.” Stan indicated to the left, toward a building that was unmistakably Ford’s house, though it was very different from the one he remembered from his own universe.
In a way this version of his house was even stranger to see than the one in the last dimension he’d been in. Because even though that parallel Earth had built a sprawling institute all around his house, the cabin itself had been preserved almost like a shrine, in the exact same condition that Ford recalled his own being in, minus a few of the security measures he had put up in his paranoid and sleep-deprived state. But this place…
The first thing that struck him was the huge sign up on the roof reading “MYSTERY SHACK,” with the S in “SHACK” having noticeably more hardware affixing it to the roof than the other letters. In fact, there were numerous signs on and around the cabin calling it the Mystery Shack and the door to his old storage room now had a sign declaring it to be the gift shop, like his house was some kind of trashy tourist trap. Well, that would explain the tourists, Ford supposed. The cabin was also larger than the one he had lived in, someone having extended the back wall out by about three feet on the first two floors and, although it was hard to tell from this angle, it looked like the back wall went on for maybe ten feet longer than it had as well.
It was far from the strangest thing he’d encountered in his thirty years traversing the multiverse, and yet it was with a slight sense of apprehension that he approached the… shack. Apprehension and outrage, though he attempted to quell the latter by reminding himself that no matter the congruencies, this was a different dimension and therefore was not his house that Stan had done this to. He went in the door marked gift shop, half-unable to believe that someone would actually put a gift shop in their house, but sure enough that’s what it was, complete with tacky souvenirs at ridiculous prices and a bored teenager sitting behind the cash register – a red-head who was currently having her nails painted by a younger blonde girl who was perched up on the counter.
“I don’t know why I even bother,” the blonde girl was saying. “You’re just going to get them all chipped again by tomorrow.”
“I don’t know why I let you bother, except I have nothing better to do,” the red-head replied, looking about as enthusiastic about the proceedings as the blonde girl did. “And your options are this, playing that math game with the nerds, or watching the movie with the giant doofy star for the hundredth time. Or I guess you could have stayed home, where your parents are.”
The blonde girl crinkled her nose in distaste. “None of the above, thank you,” she said, but she continued on painting the red-head’s nails.
Ford awkwardly cleared his throat.
“Oh thank goodness, you’re done,” the blonde girl said, putting the brush back in her bottle of nail polish. “Come on, Mabel wanted to talk to you.”
“Pacifica,” the red-head said, holding up her hand to show off two nails painted a deep green, and three that were still uncolored.
“Fine,” the blonde girl, Pacifica, said, pulling the brush back out. She wiped it against the opening of the bottle and then pointed it accusatorially at Ford. “But you tell Mabel that you all aren’t leaving without me.”
Ford stood there for a few moments longer, not sure what he should do, what with everyone mistaking him for this dimension’s Ford. The red-head gave him a funny look after a moment and said, “She’s in the living room,” tilting her head to indicate the “Employees Only” door, which lead into the rest of the house.
“Thanks,” he said. Maybe this Mabel could help him sort out what this dimension was, or failing that, his parallel self was bound to be able to clarify matters, so long as they were careful not to touch each other.
Going through the door led him out into a hallway where what appeared to be one of the hairless gopher people of the dimension Rodentus 7 was changing a lightbulb. “Hey Mr. Dr. Pines,” the gopher said. “We’re still on for later, right?”
“Yes,” Ford hazarded. “But at the moment I was looking for Mabel. Could you point me in her direction?”
“Yeah, sure. She’s in the living room,” said the gopher, pointing behind him and to Ford’s right.
Ford continued down the hallway until there was an opening to his left, leading into what had to be the living room where two little girls and a pig were watching TV. “Mabel?”
Both girls turned to look at him, and then the slighter of the two with the curly brown hair grinned, her braces glinting in the light. “Grunkle Ford! Are you guys all done?” Then her smile dropped as she eyed him suspiciously. “Wait a second. Those clothes… You said you guys were going to play that Dungeons game, not dimensional traveler. You know me and Grenda would have played with you!”
“Yeah, Dr. Ford!” the second girl said with a surprisingly deep and gravelly voice.
“But that’s okay, you can make it up to me by taking us to see the unicorns; I need some of their hair for the sweater I’m working on. Grenda’s voice is deep enough to open the enchanted glade, but last time we went there without you, Celestabellebethabelle didn’t want to give us any of her hair,” Mabel said.
“She was getting uppity with us,” Grenda added.
Ford was saved from having to respond to this request in any way by the sound of voices and footsteps coming from the opposite direction. A moment later, four people entered the living room, talking spiritedly about what sounded like a game of Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons: two more children – a boy that looked like he was probably Mabel’s brother and an Asian girl – this dimension’s Ford, wearing much neater clothing than Ford himself was including a t-shirt revealing his distinct lack of tattoo, that lucky jerk, and…
Fiddleford, or at least that’s who his brain had registered the last person as, but it couldn’t be Fiddleford. Ford had just seen Fiddleford, or another dimension’s version of Fiddleford, and while he’d certainly looked older than he had the last time Ford had seen him thirty years ago, he had aged well, still in good shape, or at least as good as he’d ever been, with the same vitality and spring to his step that Ford remembered from a much younger him. But this man… The spring was still there, but his body was old and wizened, complete with a snow white beard more befitting a man who was yet another thirty years older. Ford felt a pang of guilt course through him at the sight; was this what he had abandoned his own Fiddleford to?
Ford was so distracted by the sight of his old friend that he failed to notice straight away that the conversation among the four stopped as soon as they entered the room and saw him there. “Mabel, Grenda, get behind me now,” Parallel Ford said, him and Fiddleford stepping in front of the other two children. “I don’t know what creature that is, but it isn’t me.”
“You reckon it could be the shapeshifter?” Fiddleford suggested, easily sidestepping for a moment to let the two little girls duck behind him like they’d been told to. Though Ford did notice that none of the children look particularly pleased at being pushed to the background, and all of them were craning their heads around to watch.
“The cryogenic tube was still holding him when I checked last week,” Parallel Ford countered. “I suppose he has broken out before, however.”
Ford thought he’d better speak up before the other two decided to knock him out now and ask questions later. He doubted that, unless he were to prove a danger to them or their charges, Fiddleford and Parallel Ford would do anything more extreme than knock him out and tie him up while they questioned him, and this would hardly be the first time something like that had happened to him. But if they attempted that, then it was almost certain that Parallel Ford would touch him at some point and then, well suffice to say being interrogated wasn’t what Ford was worried about. So he held his hands up in a placating gesture and said, “I am Stanford Pines, just not the Stanford Pines from this dimension. I’ve been traveling the multiverse and ended up here, more or less on accident.”
“You realize how very improbable that sounds,” Parallel Ford said skeptically.
“But not impossible,” Fiddleford pointed out.
“He’s wearing the same clothes you were when we rescued you, Grunkle Ford,” the boy said.
“Prove it; tell us something only the real Stanford Pines would know,” Grenda demanded.
“Like what is your favorite color, or where were you when you came up with your potential solution to the Riemann hypothesis?” the Asian girl suggested.
Ford pondered the suggestion for a minute before saying, “The problem with that idea is I’d have no way of knowing what things are the same in this dimension: what experiences myself and the local version of Stanford Pines share, and which are unique to me. Anything that would be momentous enough that they would have to have happened the same for both dimensions to turn out as similarly as they appeared to have after my initial cursory exploration, would also be momentous enough that they would hardly classify as privileged information. And given the nature of Gravity Falls, even if I were to provide some sort of proof in the form of something only the ‘real Stanford Pines,’ which is a relative term at best, would know, that would not discount the possibility that I was a telepathic creature of some sort who gained the knowledge by rifling through this Ford’s mind.”
There was a beat of silence before Mabel decreed, “Whelp, I’m convinced,” a comment that was met with murmurs of agreement from the assorted children and an ambiguous shrug from Fiddleford. Mabel darted out from behind Fiddleford and Parallel Ford, and approached Ford, offering out her hand. “Hi, I’m Mabel. I’m your great niece and also your greatest niece.”
Ford felt his expression soften at the revelation that this enthusiastic little girl was his niece. And of course she was, just look at her: she even had the famous Pines hair curls. He kneeled down and took her hand, making the motions slow so as to not alarm the two men, though they seemed less wary of him now than they had a moment ago. Perhaps his comment had convinced them as well, or maybe they just trusted Mabel’s judgement. “Greetings,” he said, shaking her hand. “Do people say greetings in this dimension?”
“I don’t see why not,” she said.
“It’s nice to meet you, Mabel. Is that your brother over there?” Ford asked, indicating the little boy that was still over on the other side of the room, though he’d come out from hiding behind the two adults. Ford was excited by the prospect of not only having a nephew as well as a niece, but having a nephew that was willing to play Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons with him, if he was understanding things correctly. Of course, just because the him of this dimension had a nephew, that didn’t necessarily indicate that Ford himself had one back in his home dimension. But then, given how likely it was that he’d ever get back to his home dimension, he supposed what he did or didn’t have there was irrelevant regardless.
“Yep, that’s my twin Dipper,” Mabel informed him. Twins! It must run in the family. “He’s as big a nerd as you are. And my two best friends, Candy and Grenda, and you probably already know yourself and Fiddleford.”
“Pleased to meet you all,” Ford said, offering a friendly smile.
Just then, Stan entered the room from the same doorway Ford had used. “Alright, I wrapped the tour up early and I’ve got Wendy taking care of the tourist in the gift shop, so what was it you needed, Ford?” Stan paused and looked back and forth between Ford and Parallel Ford for a moment before turning to address Parallel Ford. “Have you been messing with that copier again?”
“Of course not. I destroyed it after what happened the last time,” Parallel Ford answered, the reminder of ‘last time’ eliciting looks of horror on the faces of the males in the room and glee on the females.
“Probably a good idea,” Stan agreed. “So why’re there two of ya?”
“He claims that he’s a dimensional traveler and version of me from another dimension,” Parallel Ford said, his tone making it clear that, whatever the children, and possibly Fiddleford, might think, he was still dubious of these claims.
“Huh. Well I guess that would explain why this one just appeared out of nowhere in a flash of portal-shaped light,” Stan mused. “I just thought you were trying to work on the teleportation thing again.”
“Teleportation?” Fiddleford repeated, with the air of who has had this conversation many times before.
“What, so building a trans-universal poly-dimensional meta-vortex is mathematically feasible, but teleportation is where you draw the line?” Parallel Ford said. “I’m telling you, it’s a viable theory; I just have to figure out how to compensate for the Earth’s rotation and orbit. And the sun’s orbit. And…”
“You got too many variables, ain’t possible to keep track of all of them. Sarsaparilla, some of those variables aren’t even defined. ” said Fiddleford.
“You could avoid them altogether if you built a receiver at the other end to transport to,” Ford suggested.
“I thought of that, but the potential applications would be too narrow at that point,” Parallel Ford said.
“But what if you could get rid of all the airports and bus stations and whatnot and replaced them with transporter stations?” said Dipper.
“Brilliant idea, Dipper!” Parallel Ford said, placing a hand on top of the boy’s head, and Dipper beamed up at him. “I hadn’t even considered the possible commercial usages.”
“Of course, you’d want to rework your plans to accommodate a large number of people at once,” Ford said, already running the mental calculations as best he could without knowing what Parallel Ford had already put together.
“Yes, yes, and probably separate less sophisticated designs for the purposes of transporting large amounts of cargo,” Parallel Ford agreed, taking a pen and a small notebook out of his back pocket to begin jotting things down.
Stan cleared his throat. Ford glared at him – they’d been having a breakthrough, and wasn’t that just like Stan not to care about their work – but Parallel Ford looked a bit sheepish and put his notebook back in his pocket. “Which I can get to after we’ve addressed the current issue,” Parallel Ford said. Ah, yes, Ford supposed that sorting out the dimensional traveler in your house would be the more pressing matter, wouldn’t it?
“At any rate, it seems you really are who you say you are,” Parallel Ford said, extending his hand to shake. “Nice to meet me.”
Ford took an abrupt step back and threw his hands up again, but this time as a gesture intended to ward off. “It is absolutely imperative that you and I never touch. If we do, it will cause the two of us to fizz out of existence and this entire universe to collapse in on itself.”
Parallel Ford obligingly lowered his hand and took a step back as well, though he still looked a bit skeptical. “I have to say, that sounds more like science fiction than science fact.”
“You were literally just talking about inventing teleportation pads less than a minute ago,” Stan pointed out dryly.
“I assure you, the danger is very real,” Ford said. “I haven’t witnessed it myself, but the Fiddleford of the last dimension I was in had; he was the one who warned me about it.”
“Well in that case, we’ll have to be certain we don’t touch each other, and be careful to make sure we don’t bump into one another accidentally as well.”
“I’ve got just the thing!” Mabel cried, then she took off in the direction that the other four had come from, her two friends following on her heels.
“Any sort of long-term precautionary measure isn’t really necessary,” Ford called after her. “I won’t be staying for all that long.” But either Mabel didn’t hear him, or she was just choosing to ignore him.
Then the gopher came around the corner, carrying what appeared to be a manuscript of some sort. He glanced back and forth between the two Fords for a moment and asked, “Have you dudes been messing around with the copier again?”
Despite his protests to Mabel, somehow Ford ended up staying for a week, which meant her ‘just the thing’ ended up coming very much in handy. He only wished that she had come up with something slightly less embarrassing than Parallel Ford and him wearing bells.
(Stan had laughed himself sick at the sight of them, which Ford had understood to a certain degree, even if he had found it extremely grating.
Parallel Ford had just smiled and said, “Knock it off, knucklehead,” while cuffing Stan on the back of the head. “You do realize that if this dimension disappears all the money goes with it?”
Stan had sobered and fixed the two of them with a serious look. “You both put those bracelets on and you don’t take them off. I’m not losing my money because of you.”
“Yeah, I thought that’d get your attention,” Parallel Ford had said, still smiling.)
Ford put the bracelet on when Mabel brought it to him, because Parallel Ford had and it seemed polite, but he really did mean to leave by the end of that first day, just as soon as he’d gotten his portal gun fixed, or, perhaps more accurately, broken in the very specific way he wanted to be. With another version of himself and Fiddleford helping him, it really shouldn’t have taken longer than one afternoon. But it turned out that the gopher – who was actually a young man named Soos, and Dipper and Mabel’s unofficial, or according to Mabel official if not legal, older brother – actually had been holding a manuscript, one that Parallel Ford had promised to go through with him one last time before he tried to send it off to publishers. And Ford got roped in to help with that, since he had technically agreed to do so, and it apparently didn’t matter that he had been under the guise of Parallel Ford when he’d done it.
(“This is actually quite good,” Ford had said after reading one of the passages. Surprisingly so, given Soos’s relative ineloquence.
“Thanks dude,” Soos had said, ecstatic at the praise.
“It ought to be, we’ve spent four years editing it. You know, I’m still not certain about the transistion between these passages here,” Parallel Ford had said, pointing to the passages in question.
“Four years?” Ford had echoed.
“Yeah, Mr. Dr. Pines has been helping me out a whole lot.”
“Soos, I keep telling you, you can call me Ford,” Parallel Ford had said. “Or Uncle Ford, if you prefer.”
Going off of Soos’s expression, Ford would have guessed he did prefer that, very much so, though he continued to refer to Parallel Ford as Mr. Dr. Pines regardless.)
The next morning all four of the younger girls – Mabel, Grenda, Candy and Pacifica – insisted that both Fords take them out on the trip to see the unicorns that had been postponed the previous day due to the sudden appearance of Ford himself and the editing of Soos’s story. Ford wasn’t entirely sure why his presence on this trip was deemed necessary, especially as he was certain he had not made any promises to attend as he had with Soos. But it was admittedly enjoyable to see the mingled horror and disgust on the unicorns’ faces at the discovery that there were two Fords in this dimension now. Somehow all six of them neglected to mention that Ford wouldn’t be staying for very long. And the hike through the woods both to the enchanted glade and back to the cabin, were fun as well.
(“Other Grunkle Ford,” Mabel had said, dropping back a bit so she could walk alongside him and poking him in the side. “We need to come up with a name for you.”
“I have a name,” Ford had said, confused. “It’s Stanford Pines.”
“I know that,” Mabel had said, somehow turning the act of expelling air in order to talk into one with concussive force. “What I meant is you need a nickname. We can’t keep calling you ‘Other Grunkle Ford.’”
“Why not?” Ford had asked, growing further confused. It was a bit long, he supposed, but not to the point of being unwieldy, and it did a perfectly adequate job of describing him.
Mabel had eyed him. “I’ve got my work cut out for me with you. But a name! We need a name. Maybe we could call you by your middle name?”
“Our middle name was our father’s name,” Parallel Ford had put in mildly.
Mabel had scowled. “That’s no good; your dad was a poop. Ooo, I know, we could call you Grunkle Sixer.”
Ford hadn’t winced at the sound of his old nickname, but part of him had wanted to. It had brought forth memories of Bill and older memories of his brother, the latter being less unpleasant, but much more complicated. “I’d prefer something else.”
“Okay.” Mabel had tapped thoughtfully on her chin. “How about Mason?”
“Mabel, you can’t give him your brother’s name,” Parallel Ford had chided.
“What’s wrong with him borrowing it? Dipper’s not even using it right now, he won’t mind,” Mabel had said.
“Mabel.”
“I still don’t know what’s wrong with my actual name,” Ford had said.
“Fine, we’ll call you Grunkle Stanford, for now. But I’m going to come up with the perfect name for you, you’ll see. Girls, I’ve got a project for us!” Mabel had called, speeding her gait to catch up with her friends, who had been walking a few paces ahead of them.
“Is she always like that?” Ford had asked.
“She’s not always that sedate,” Parallel Ford had offered.)
After lunch Ford and the Parallel Ford had made it as far as the latter’s study – now on the ground floor where Ford’s thinking parlor used to be, though it was a good deal larger than his think parlor had been due to the expansions made to the house – before Dipper had poked his head in to say that he and Candy were thinking about playing another game of Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons, if either Ford or Parallel Ford wanted to join. Ford hadn’t played the game in years, and found himself perfectly willing to waste one more afternoon if it meant a getting to play again. Upon learning that both Ford and Parallel Ford were going to be playing, Mabel and Grenda agreed to play as well, provided that someone else do their math and charts for them. Then Pacifica said if everyone else was going to play, then she would too, as it was better than painting Wendy’s nails for the second day in a row. The kids fetched the necessary supplies from the attic, which had been opened up into one giant game room slash craft room slash study, and brought them down to the living room to play, on the grounds that is was closer to the kitchen for easy snack access. Wendy, Soos, and Stan were all working and so were unable to play with them, but they did wander through on occasion and they would usually then stop for a minute or two to observe.
(Stan had come through, likely when he was taking a break between tours, and had nursed a can of Pitt Cola while watching them for ten minutes or so. Then he had walked over to Parallel Ford, who was acting in the role of Probabilitor the Annoying for this round, and whispered something in his ear, which had elicited a mischievous grin from Parallel Ford. Dipper and Candy had sat up straighter in response, while the other girls had let out a collective groan.
“What is it?” Ford had asked.
“Mystery Twins Classic are way too hard to beat at this game when they team up,” Mabel had said, dramatically flopping back onto her pet pig. Waddles had squirmed out from under her, dropping Mabel onto the floor with a loud oof, and then had turned around to lick her on the face, which Mabel had welcomed with a round of giggles.
“Come on you guys, it’s more fun when it’s a challenge,” Dipper had said and Candy had agreed with him.
“No, it’s more fun when we get to beat Probabilitor up,” Grenda had corrected.
“Stan, you play Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons?” Ford had asked, incredulous. His own brother had never shown any interest in it back when they had been younger.
“Course not,” Stan had scoffed. “No offense, but who wants to play a game where you have to use graphing paper?”
“Apparently we do,” Pacifica had observed, sounding as though she didn’t entirely disagree with Stan’s sentiment, despite the fact that from what Ford had seen, she was nearly as good as Dipper or Candy were.
“Which makes me seriously question your sanity,” Stan had said. “Nah, math and graphing paper are for nerds, but making stuff up? That’s something I’m good at.”)
The following morning, Ford managed to get an hour or so of work in, but then Fiddleford came over to help Parallel Ford with modifying his teleporter plans now that they were ‘actually potentially feasible.’ They offered to move down to one of the basement labs to work, or to allow Ford the use of one of them, so he could continue his own work on his portal gun in peace, but he declined; he was certain he could focus despite the conversation happening on the other side of the room. Unfortunately, Ford had underestimated how interesting their conversation would be, and after about twenty minutes of half-listening while trying to do his own work, Ford jumped in on their project instead.
Fairly quickly into their discussion they discovered that, while up until their sojourns into the Dimension without Shrimp – or rather into two separate parallel dimensions without shrimp, since they had both been there at presumably the same time, but obviously hadn’t seen each other – Ford and Parallel Ford’s lives had been more or less identical, from there they had diverged. For the last four years Ford had continued to explore the multiverse, expanding his breadth of knowledge with all the things he’d seen in the different dimensions, and Parallel Ford had returned to his own dimension and studied the things he had discovered on his pan-dimensional journey, enhancing his depth of understanding. As such, they were able to complement each other in their work, rather than each making the other redundant. Fiddleford, of course, was able to come up with ideas that neither Ford ever would have, both of them having what ultimately amounted to the same mind, and added some much needed perspective.
(“I just wish you would have realized that thirty years ago,” Fiddleford had joked, causing Parallel Ford’s countenance to take on a guilty cast, one that Ford was sure was mirrored on his own face.
“None of that, now,” Fiddleford had said, pointing at Parallel Ford. “You know I don’t blame you none for what happened; it was my own fool fault for inventing a gun for erasing memories and then testing it on myself. Besides, if you hadn’t dragged me kickin’ and screamin’ out of the dump, I still wouldn’t know who I am, and I never would have made up with Tate. And if you hadn’t made me patent all those doodles, I wouldn’t be filthy stinkin’ rich neither.”
The last comment had elicited a small chuckle from Parallel Ford. “Well, I suppose there is that.”
“And you,” Fiddleford had said, turning in Ford’s direction. “Don’t you look so glum neither. I’m sure your Fiddleford’s not upset with you any more than I am. It ain’t in our nature to hold grudges.”)
At about two in the afternoon, Fiddleford declared it to be time for lunch, yes for all of us Stanfords. If Fiddleford’s tone had been eerily reminiscent of Ford’s mother’s from when he had been a boy, at least Fiddleford didn’t share Ma’s objection to bringing work to the table. So as they made their way to the kitchen, Ford continued telling them about an extremely useful device that he had encountered that disassembled matter and turned it into data for storage purposes, something that might prove useful in their efforts to invent teleportation, if they could find a way to make it work for living matter. Dipper, who had already been at the table, scribbling away in the blue journal with a pine tree on the cover that Parallel Ford had made for him, when they arrived, listened avidly to Ford’s account, only to get up and leave as soon as Ford finished. He returned not more than five minutes later, though this time he had his sister in tow, and both of them were clamoring for “portal stories.” Ford had tried to demur at first, citing the project he was working on with the other two, but then Mabel started chanting “portal stories, portal stories,” which her brother joined in on in short order. This was apparently a clarion call for the rest of the family, because it wasn’t another minute or two before Stan and Soos made their way into the kitchen and started chanting along, at which point Parallel Ford had laughed and began chanting as well. Fiddleford didn’t chant with the rest of them, but he did shoot Ford an amused look and a shrug, so Ford finally gave in. He ended up telling stories late into the night, the others drifting off one by one as it got later and later, until finally it was just him and Dipper, who Ford wound up having to carry to bed at around three-thirty, when the boy fell asleep at the table.
(“I’m headed to bed; it’s getting late,” Parallel Ford had said after Ford had finished his story about the Dimension of the Hats, giving a pointed look to Dipper.
“It’s summer, Grunkle Ford,” Dipper had said, from which Ford surmised Dipper had just been obliquely told to bed as well.
“I suppose it is. And I’m hardly one to judge, regardless. Alright, but don’t exhaust yourself; we don’t need you chewing up any more of your shirts.”
Dipper had scowled, though it was the scowl of someone who very well knew that the other person was right. “Yeah, okay. Just a few more stories.”
“Just a few more,” Parallel Ford had agreed, sounding amused. He had then reached up under the front of Dipper’s hat and ruffled the boy’s hair a bit. “Goodnight Dipper.”
Dipper had reached up and grabbed Parallel Ford’s hand with both of his and squeezed a little. And odd gesture, but visibly affectionate. “Goodnight Grunkle Ford. Love you.”
“I love you too,” Parallel Ford had replied, and then he had left.
“Now Grunkle Stanford, tell me more about these sapient hats. How did they even manage to talk?”)
It continued like that for the rest of the week. There was always someone running around doing something that he nearly inevitably got pulled into as well. Parallel Ford, Stan, Dipper, and Mabel weren’t a large family by any means, even taking into account Mabel’s pet pig Waddles and their pet goat – Ford thought it was their pet, at least – Gompers, but they still managed to fill the very large cabin with noise and, for lack of a more precise term, life.
Then there were all the assorted people almost constantly coming and going. There were all the tourists that came to see the Mystery Shack, which seemed a strange mix of genuine and educational information about all the anomalies in Gravity Falls, and a bunch of made up junk. There was Wendy and Soos, the employees at the Mystery Shack, though they seemed to hang around far more often than their work hours required – though with Wendy it was a little hard to tell when she was hanging out off the clock, and when she was skipping out on work to hang out. There was Fiddleford, who despite no longer being Parallel Ford’s research assistant, was still collaborating with him on a number of projects, and Tate, Fiddleford’s son, had showed up one day too to pick up his father when he’d forgotten about a previous engagement. There were Mabel’s friends, Grenda, Candy, and Pacifica, who Ford had already met, and Gideon, a little boy with an inexplicable Southern accent that Mabel doted on like her pet pig, and everyone else seemed to regard with a resigned acceptance. There was the group of teenagers that Ford thought were friends with Wendy, though Dipper was folded into their group easily when he expressed in interest in joining them, and the one boy with the dark hair who looked a little like one of the undead – Roger, maybe? Ford was starting to find it difficult to keep track of all these names – seemed to have a soft spot for Mabel. There was also Soos’s grandmother, who came over and made them dinner one evening, and of everyone, she was the only person who seemed the slightest bit perturbed to be confronted with a second Ford, but only then because she was worried as to whether she’d made enough food for everyone. Ford thought there may have been more people than that, even, but they all started to blur together at a certain point.
(“Is it always this… busy around here?” Ford had asked Parallel Ford during a rare quiet moment, relatively speaking.
“Things are a bit calmer during the school year when the kids are out all day, especially once tourist season dies down. But as for this time of year, yes it’s always like this, more or less,” Parallel Ford had replied.
“How do you get any work done at all during the summer, then?” Ford had said.
Parallel Ford had paused for a moment. “Come to think of it, I guess we have been getting pulled into more over these past few days than I usually am.”
“Hey genius.” Both Ford and Parallel Ford had turned to see Stan watching them from the doorway to the study, with an expression that had struck Ford as being very familiar, though he hadn’t been able to place what it meant. “Those kids like you, and they’ve been trying to keep you too busy to work on your portal gun, because they don’t want you to leave. Mabel’s idea, I’ll bet, but I guess it doesn’t matter who came up with it, since they all jumped on board pretty quickly.”)
Truthfully, Ford didn’t want to leave. He hadn’t wanted to leave the last parallel Earth he had visited either, but this was different. That place, where an alternate version of himself had worldwide fame and renown for his research and was running his very own Institute of Oddology represented a cherished dream of Ford’s from since before he could remember it seemed. It was also a dream he had given up on a long, long time ago. And maybe some childhood dreams never truly leave you completely – Ford’s hand strayed to the breast pocket of his coat where his fingers lightly traced the edges of an old photograph hidden there – but in the end it had been easy to walk away from that one; he’d had a lot of practice at it, after all.
Here was something completely different, something that, had you asked him a week ago, Ford would not have remotely thought to say he wanted. This dimension’s Ford still had respect from his academic colleagues, but he’s seemed to have given up on the idea of being the person to change the world in exchange for people. People who liked him, and cared about him, who wanted to be a part of his life and wanted him to be a part of theirs. It was nothing Ford ever thought that he wanted, and everything he couldn’t find it in himself to be willing to walk away from.
But he couldn’t stay. Of course he couldn’t; even if the people here never treated him like he was a duplicate or redundancy – Ford thought that they had maybe categorized him in their minds as another twin to Parallel Ford and Stan, or one of a set of triplets, he supposed – that didn’t change the fact that that was what he was here. And sure, he could probably get used to the bell jingling with every move he made, but that in itself posed a problem. That sort of complacency only increased the risk of him and Parallel Ford someday bumping into each other on accident. Then there was the other thing.
(“I don’t understand how you were able to just walk away from the fight with Bill,” Ford had asked.
Parallel Ford had smiled softly. “Tell me, during your travels did you ever make it to Dimension 52 to see Jheselbraum the Unswerving?”
“Yes,” Ford had said, sitting up straighter. “Yes I did. She told me most of what I know about Bill and she also told me that I had-“
“The face of the man who was destined to destroy Bill,” Parallel Ford had finished. “Let me ask you another question: how many Stanford Pines do you think there are out there in the multiverse? And Stanley Pines? And Stanford or Stanley Pines with a son with the same face as them? For that matter, how many Filbrick Pines do you think there are? All of them would have the face of the man destined to destroy Bill Cipher, and any one of them could be the one to do it. But my family needed me, specifically. They asked me to stay, so I did.”)
So he got up early each morning, before anyone else was awake, and worked on his portal gun. He would get it working again and then leave. He would go back out there and destroy Bill, so that the Stanford Pines this family wanted and needed could stay.
He finally finished deactivating the portal gun’s safety mechanism around seven in the morning a week after he arrived. He headed toward the kitchen where he could already hear the sounds of the house’s inhabitants eating breakfast – a bit early for them, that was an unusual – the bright chatter feeling incongruent with the heavy steps of his feet.
Dipper looked up and smiled when he entered the room. “Morning, Grunkle Stanford. You’re just in time for our crazy rooftop fireworks party.”
Ford blinked a few times. He had been so caught up in how he was going to explain that he was leaving that Dipper’s declaration took him completely by surprise. “Aren’t fireworks supposed to be done at night?” he asked.
“Pshh, yeah if you want the cops to catch you,” Mabel said.
And somehow Ford found himself dragged along into this as well, with all five of them squeezed up on the little rooftop ledge, which worked so long as Ford and Parallel Ford stayed on opposite sides. The cops did end up catching them, but Parallel Ford had explained they weren’t setting of fireworks, he was conducting an experiment on the aesthetic qualities of different classes of low explosive pyrotechnic devices and Stan had accused them of being lame, and the two police men had obligingly left.
Once they had finished off the fireworks, the kids decided the best way to put out any lingering fires or sparks was to have a water balloon fight, which had turned into a mud fight by the time Wendy had showed up for work. Stan told her that he was leaving the Shack closed for the day so they could have a Family Fun Day instead, and Wendy had shrugged and challenged the kids to a tree climbing competition. Someone, likely Stan or Parallel Ford, must have called Soos at some point, because he showed up in the early afternoon with lunch and FCLORP equipment, though it was unanimously agreed to forgo any of the typical rules associated with FCLORP in favor of a general play-pretend type game. That kept them running around and busy until the early evening, when Stan ordered pizza and they all sat outside on the back porch to eat it, not one of them having gone inside the house for longer than it took to grab a snack or use the restroom all day.
“Alright,” Stan said once the pizza was finished and Wendy and Soos had gone back home. “I think it’s time for you two little gremlins to hit the hay.”
“But it’s barely six o’clock,” Dipper protested.
“Yeah, and you both have been up early in the morning and until late at night every day this week. You need rest,” said Stan.
“But Grunkle Stan we’re not tired,” Mabel said, yawning hugely around Stan’s name.
“Sure you aren’t,” Stan said sarcastically. “Dipper, your shirt.” Dipper spat the shirt he had been absent-mindedly chewing on out of his mouth and glared at it balefully.
“Look, if you kids want to read, or watch some videos on your tablet, that’s fine, just get your pajamas on and get in bed first,” Parallel Ford told them, and the kids reluctantly agreed to this compromise.
“Actually, Dipper, Mabel could I speak with you for a second before that?” Ford asked.
“Yeah, what’s up?” Dipper said.
“I…” Ford began, but looking at their happy expectant faces, he couldn’t bring himself to say it. “I just wanted to let you know how much fun I had with you today, all week, actually, and that I consider myself lucky to have had an opportunity to meet you the both of you,” he continued instead, well aware of what a coward he was being.
“Aww, we love you too, Grunkle Stanford,” Mabel said. She threw her arms around him, and Ford just barely had the presence of mind to hug her back, and Dipper as well when it was his turn.
Ford was vaguely aware of the kids saying goodnight to the other two men, but it wasn’t until Stan’s sharp call of “Stanford,” that Ford was able to fully pay attention again.
“You better not be planning on leaving without telling those kids you’re going and giving them a real good-bye,” Stan said, glaring at him. Parallel Ford seemed more sympathetic, but equally firm on the matter.
“You’re right,” Ford admitted. “But I want to wait until morning to tell them. Today was a good day; let’s let them have that.”
Stan nodded, stretched, and said, “Well I guess I’m pulling an all-nighter to make sure you don’t pull a runner after I fall asleep.” Ford was a bit indignant at the implications of Stan’s statement, though the righteousness of it was a undermined by the fact that a part of Ford had been considering doing just that. “Ford, you want to join me?”
“All night movie marathon?” Parallel Ford suggested.
“Yeah, but no sci-fi movies unless they’ve got a lot of explosions. Or they’re really dumb so I can laugh at you two nerds getting annoyed,” Stan said.
“I know what kind of movies you like, knucklehead,” Parallel Ford said. “Now you go get some popcorn, and we’ll pick out the movie. Better yet, get yourself a tub of ice cream.”
“I like the way you think, poindexter,” Stan said.
He got up and walked to the kitchen, while Ford and Parallel Ford went to the living room. Parallel Ford turned the TV to the Black and White Period Piece Old Lady Boring Movie Channel, which Ford thought was an odd choice, but Stan didn’t complain when he came in a few minutes later, and Ford figured that he would be fine with anything that Parallel Ford liked.
They were about twenty minutes into a rather gripping historical fiction drama, when the portal appeared. It was one that looked familiar to Ford, though he couldn’t place where from; it certainly didn’t look like the portals that were opened by his portal gun.
“Looks like your ride’s here,” Stan observed, and that’s when it hit Ford. Of course this portal didn’t look anything like the ones made by the portal gun he had picked up in Dimension 3000-and-5; this gateway was the one created by his portal, the one he had built himself back in his home dimension.
Parallel Ford jumped up. “I nearly forgot; there’s something I’ve been meaning to give you before you leave. Wait right here while I get it. Unless of course the portal starts to destabilize and you have to go through to avoid missing it altogether, but barring that, I’ll be right back,” he said, and then he rushed down the hallway to the study.
“Guess I won’t have the opportunity to give the kids a proper good-bye after all,” Ford observed.
“Don’t worry about it. This is a completely different situation,” Stan said. “You’re going home, after all. The kids will be happy for you.”
There was a long, awkward silence after that. Ford hadn’t been alone with Stan much, or at all really, since he’d come to this dimension. Truth be told, he had been avoiding it. His relationship with his brother was complicated, and having a parallel version of him around that wasn’t really him, was only making it seem more complicated.
“Hey, there is something I wanted to say to you before you go,” Stan said a little uncertainly. “I know you’re still pretty hacked off at your brother. Heck, you’ve been acting like you’re mad at me, and I didn’t even do anything to you, technically.”
“I’m sorry,” Ford began, but Stan waved him off.
“It doesn’t bother me. I mean, it goes both ways, doesn’t it? I’m not really your brother and you’re not really mine. And me and Ford have been square for years now, so I’m not going to get upset just because you’re acting kind of like a jerk,” Stan said.
“Ford and I have been square,” Ford corrected. “Grammar.”
Stan laughed a little and shook his head. “You’re just a ridiculous as Ford is, you know that? What I’m trying to say is: I don’t care, but that guy on the other side of that,” Stan said, using his thumb to point at the portal, “he cares a lot. And I know you want an apology from him for screwing up, and I’m not going to say you don’t deserve one or ten for all the stupid stuff he’s pulled. But he’s been working to bring you back for, what thirty years now? Yeesh, that’s a long time. So once you finally show up, he’s going to be too happy he’s got you back to be thinking about apologizing. But he is sorry, and if you give him a chance to, or you know, maybe remind him, he’ll apologize. Just cut him a little slack. And maybe thank him too.”
“Thank him?” Ford said incredulously. “Even if he is sorry for what he did thirty years ago, reopening that portal-“
“Extremely dangerous, could cause the end of the world as we know it, blah, blah, blah. I know Stanford. If you don’t want to thank him for saving you, that’s fine, but like I said, he’s dedicated thirty years of his life to trying to bring you back home; there’s gotta be something in all that you can thank him for. He just wants to know that his brother thinks he’s done at least one worthwhile thing in his life.
“Or maybe not, what do I know?” Stan said, his sudden tone of slightly forced levity breaking the tension. “Just think about it, will ya?”
“I’ve found it,” Parallel Ford declared triumphantly. He paused in the doorway, looking at the pair of them, and then turned to Stan with his eyebrows raised. Stan gave a sort of half-shrug, and then Parallel Ford smiled. It was odd, watching the both of them communicate silently and without words. Odd, how often Ford had forgotten and convinced himself that he worked best alone, when he’d always been happier as part of a team.
“Here you are, the Dimensional Rift Sealer. It… well, I guess the name’s pretty self-explanatory, isn’t it? I don’t know if you’ll need it or not, but just in case,” Parallel Ford said, offering Ford the device.
“Give me that,” Stan snapped, snatching it from Parallel Ford before slapping it down in Ford’s hand with a force that sent the bells on his wrist jangling madly. “You two knuckleheads want us to trip at the finish line? The world’s dumbest geniuses, the pair of you.”
“I wasn’t going to touch him,” Parallel Ford objected, then he deflated a little. “Thank you, Stanley.”
“Yes thank you. Both of you, for everything,” Ford said. “And now I suppose it’s time for me to leave. To go home.” Ford said the word slowly, testing the shape of it in his mouth, and found he liked it better than he remembered.
“Goodbye,” Stan said.
“Goodbye,” Parallel Ford echoed. “And remember, the people waiting for you on the other side of the portal, they need you, Stanford.”
Ford held one hand up in acknowledgment, but he didn’t look away from the portal. One, two steps to the edge, and then one more step through. Through to home.
The place on the other side of the portal was unmistakably his basement lab, looking just as he remembered it. Aside from the now completely destroyed portal that is. And there approaching him from amidst the wreckage, looking either very different from when Ford had last seen him, or nearly just the same, depending on your perspective, was Stanley.
Ford thought that if Stanley had seemed apologetic or worried, then it would have been easier for Ford to look past the insanely risky stunt Stanley had just pulled, and the fact that Stanley had been the one to push Ford into the portal in the first place. The latter had been an accident, after all, not a deliberate betrayal like the last time Stanley had ruined his life – and Ford was past that last time because they had both been stupid kids when it happened and now he was a full grown man in his late fifties and petty childhood grudges were beneath him. They were. But Stanley didn’t look apologetic or worried, he looked proud of himself. Proud, as though he didn’t care that all he’d done was fix his own mistake by making a catastrophically larger one. Ford felt his fingers curl into a fist, and he clenched it tight.
And then, for the moment at least, he let it go.
Because Stanley also looked immensely happy to see Ford. Happy enough that Ford could believe that ocean of apologetic feelings were waiting underneath for after this initial reunion to come out and be sorted out along with all the other complicated feelings they both had. So Ford approached Stanley, his brother, his family, and met him in a hug.
Despite the fact that Stanley had been the one coming in for a hug in the first place, he seemed almost surprised by it, but after a moment he was holding on to Ford as tightly as Ford was holding on to him. “I’m so glad you’re back.”
“And I’m… still incredibly angry with you,” Ford said, grabbing Stanley by the shoulders so he could pull away and look him in the eye. “Do you have any idea how much danger you put everyone in by restarting the portal?” Ford took a deep breath, and let it out. “But I am glad to be home again. Thank you for… for needing me.”
Ford wasn’t sure if Stanley took that in the way he meant it, but he supposed it didn’t matter exactly how Stanley took it, since he smiled in response, and brought a hand up to wipe underneath one eye, which Ford tactfully pretended not to notice. “This guy. You’re my brother knucklehead; of course I need you.”
“Hey. Hi, Mabel here. Quick question: what the heck is going on here?”
Oh. Ford knew, given how similar their universes were before he and Parallel Ford had each fallen into their respective portals, that the odds were highly in favor of this outcome. Despite that, he hadn’t allowed himself to get his hopes up, or even think about it really. He knew Stanley would be there, and he could make that be enough. But there they were, Mabel and Dipper and even Soos, staring at him and looking… very confused, actually, but they could work on that.
“Greetings,” Ford said, walking over to the children – and Soos, though in a lot of ways, that amounted to the same thing really – and kneeling down to be on Mabel and Dipper’s level. “I’m Stan’s twin brother, which makes me your Great Uncle, or Grunkle, if you prefer, Ford. I fell through the portal that used to be over there a very long time ago, and it’s only just now that Stan’s been able to reactivate it and bring me back. Something that he shouldn’t have done, given all the warnings I left,” Ford said, giving Stan a pointed look, though Stan appeared unimpressed, “but I’m here now. And I’m pleased, and consider myself very, very lucky to meet all of you.”