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Stan didn’t know what the heck was going on. It had been just a normal day, he and Ford were down in the pawn shop helping to straighten up the merchandise for Pa before they were allowed to go out and play for the day, when a lady walked in. She was pretty young looking, maybe not even an adult at all, but an old teenager, had long brown hair practically to her waist, a canvas bag hanging over her shoulder and was wearing jean shorts and a sweater – who even wore a sweater in the middle of summer? – covered in a pattern of little clocks and red phone booths. When Stan first spotted her, he thought for sure that she was one of those people who came in the shop to look at all the weirdest things they had out for sale and ended up taking home some piece of junk that they loved for whatever reason. But she didn’t browse the shelves at all, instead heading straight up to Pa behind the counter. Then as Pa was greeting her, she pulled back her arm and punched him, right in the face. Pa went down like a sack of bricks.
“Whoa,” the lady said, leaning over the counter to look at him. “I knocked him unconscious. And I think I broke his nose too. High-five Mabel!” There was a slapping sound, like she was clapping her hands together to high-five herself.
So now there was a crazy lady in the shop who had just punched their dad unconscious and who was standing between them and both the exits. They could maybe hide behind the shelf here and hope she left before she saw them, but on the other hand, she had just punched their dad unconscious, and maybe Pa was kind of a jerk sometimes, but that didn’t mean Stan was going to let people go around punching him for no reason.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Stan demanded.
“What are you doing, Stan?” Ford hissed, clearly not happy with Stan’s plan to confront the crazy lady, even as he came to stand next to Stan in support.
The crazy lady whipped around to look at them. Her eyes went wide and she pressed her hands to her mouth before letting out a very loud and high-pitched squeal. “Look at the two of you!” She had pulled her hands away from her mouth just far enough to allow herself to speak, and now began bouncing on the balls of her feet in delight. “You’re so cute and little, and I just want to take you home with me. No, bad Mabel. You promised no stealing the small children. The super adorable small children.” She squealed again.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Stan said, trying to sound tough when he as mostly just feeling really, really confused.
“Right. Hi, I’m Mabel and I’ve come from the future to punch your dad in the face because he’s a total poop,” she said. Definitely crazy.
“From the future? You’re saying you’re a time traveler?” Ford asked, sounding excited and disbelieving at the same time.
Which yeah, Stan got that the idea of time travel was pretty cool, and right up Ford’s nerdy alley, but “Time travel isn’t real.”
The crazy lady tsk’d at him. “You’re going to have to learn to trust me Stan.” How did she know his name? Maybe she had heard Ford whisper it a minute ago. “And you will eventually. But for now I guess I’ll just have to prove it to you.” She grabbed the thing of tape measure that was hooked to one of her belt loops. “I’ll see you in-“
The crazy lady disappeared. “Where did she go?” Stan said.
“Maybe she was telling the truth? And she really did just travel through time?” Ford suggested.
“But time travel isn’t real. Right?” Stan said, suddenly feeling a lot less sure than he had a minute ago.
“-in the future,” Mabel said, reappearing and picking up her sentence right from where’ she’d left off like no time had passed. For her, maybe it hadn’t. “That was only a quick ten second hop to the future, just to show you I can totally travel through time.”
“Holy…”
“I can’t believe time travel is real!” Ford said, bursting with excitement. “Does this mean you’re from the future? The distant future? What’s it like? Are those X-7 Dimensionizers on your sweater? Does Inspector Spacetime still exist in the future? Is that show based on real time travelers? Is our dad some kind of key point that makes something bad happen in the future? Did you render him unconscious to keep it from happening?”
“Ford, you gotta breathe,” Stan reminded him.
Mabel grinned at them and began ticking off answers on her fingers. “Yes; no, but I’ve been there; mostly pretty grey; yes; yes; probably not; yes; and no.”
“Wait,” Stan said, running back through Ford’s list of questions in his head, “Are you saying Pa messes up the future, but that’s not why you punched him?” Stan asked.
“Nope,” Mabel said, popping the p. “You see, if you travel back in time to change the past, there’s a huge chance of causing a paradox. At least, unless you have a time wish, but Dipper – that’s my twin brother – and I aren’t allowed to compete in Globnar any more after what happened the last time. Which is a major overreaction on their parts if you ask me; I mean, two-thirds of that stadium was still standing afterwards. Well, half of it anyway. So I can’t come back and try to stop your dad from doing the awful thing he ends up doing. But there’s nothing saying I can’t punch him for being a massive jerk.”
“What does he do?” Stan asked. Whatever it was, it must be pretty bad for someone to come time traveling back just to punch him. Probably even bad enough that he actually possibly deserved it.
Mabel’s smile faltered. “I don’t think I’m allowed to tell you that. But when it happens I want you to remember that it’s wrong and he’s wrong okay? Promise me you’ll both remember that.”
Stan and Ford looked at each other. Even if she was a time traveler, Mabel was still weird. “Sure,” Stan agreed.
“Okay,” Ford echoed. “Hey Mabel, do you think you could take us on a trip to see the future. Just a quick one?”
“Or to the past? I want to see some dinosaurs,” Stan added.
“Sure can!” Mabel agreed. “As long as we have time for it.”
Stan groaned, because he knew exactly what was coming. “But that doesn’t make any sense,” Ford protested. Yep, here they go again. “You’re a time traveler. You can’t run out of time. You literally have all the time right at your fingertips.”
“Only if you assume the other guys don’t have time travel too,” Mabel countered. “So really, I only have as long as it takes for the time cops to figure out where I am.”
“You’re some kind of time criminal?” Stan asked. That made her so much more awesome.
“I prefer loveable time rogue. It’s got the word ‘loveable’ in it,” Mabel said.
“Don’t you mean ‘as long as it takes for the time cops to figure out when you are?’” Ford said. “Although, once they figure out when you traveled back to, wouldn’t they just travel to the exact time that you arrived? Or even a little bit before? But if that was the case, why wouldn’t they already be here?”
“Whoa, I know you got a big ol’ brain in there Ford, but don’t hurt yourself,” Mabel said. And how did she know Ford’s name? Maybe Stan had said it earlier? “You’re right that they can track me to exactly when I arrived, but like I said, they don’t know where I am yet. They weren’t expecting to hop a flight from Oregon to New Jersey before I time traveled. But like I was saying, I came back to 1960-something to do two things. One, punch your dad in the face; that’s a big check. And two, get a picture of the two of you wearing these.” Mabel reached into her bag and pulled out what looked like a pair of sweaters.
“Why do you want a picture of us?” Stan asked suspiciously.
“For my scrapbook, silly!” Mabel replied. “Now let’s see… Ford you’re the oldest – high six for alpha twins – so this top one’s for you.” Ford, looking both confused and pleased, gave her the requested high six before taking the top sweater off the pile. “And this one’s yours, Stan.”
Stan took the sweater and unfolded it, while at the back of his mind he was trying to figure out how Mabel knew them in the future. Because she had to know them, that’s the only way she could know about the high six, because that was Stan and Ford’s thing.
The sweater, when Stan finished unfolding it, turned out to be an eye-searing shade of bright red. On the front of it was a large stark white circle, and inside the circle read in bold black letters “STAN 2.” He assumed that Ford’s must say “STAN 1” on it. “This… is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen!” Stan said, rushing to pull it on.
“It’s, ah, definitely something,” Ford said.
“Thanks! I knitted them myself,” Mabel said.
“Really? Did you use some kind of cool, futuristic fabric?” Ford asked.
“Maybe?” Mabel said. “When was the cotton gin invented, like the seventies?”
“The modern cotton gin was invented in the late seventeen hundreds, and cotton as a fabric has been around for centuries,” Ford corrected.
“Oh, well in that case, no I did not use a futuristic fabric. Now put on your sweater so I can take a picture,” she said, pulling a rectangular thing covered in rhinestones out of her pocket and waving it around. “The sooner we get this picture taken the sooner we can start our trip across time and space.”
Ford still looked like he didn’t understand the awesomeness of these sweaters, but he was way too smart to keep complaining about it when time travel adventures were on the line. So he pulled it on and Mabel made them pose together while she took pictures with her future thingy.
“So that’s what cameras look like in the future?” Ford asked once she was done.
“Nah, this isn’t a camera; it’s my phone,” Mabel answered. “But it does have a camera in it. And a music player and a computer and a whole lot of things.”
Stan’s eyes went wide. She fit all that in that tiny thing? “Can we go to the future first?”
“Sure thing!” Mabel said, grabbing her tape measure.
Suddenly there was a bright flash of light from out front, and a deep booming voice called, “Mabel Pines!”
“Rats, it’s the fuzz,” Mabel said, snapping her fingers and making a sour expression. She gave Stan and Ford an apologetic look. “Sorry guys, I guess we aren’t going to get to go on a time travel adventure after all. Well, I better go turn myself over to Time Baby.”
Stan waited until Mabel was outside to turn to Ford and ask, “Did that guy just call her Mabel Pines?”
“Do you think she’s related to us? It would explain why she wanted pictures of us in these sweaters,” Ford said.
“Yeah, maybe,” Stan agreed. “… Do you want to go see what a time baby is?”
The two of them raced outside, where they were confronted with the sight of Mabel with her arms crossed as she stared up at a giant baby. Like the size of a house giant, though part of that might have been because he was sitting in a hovering metal baby chair thing. He also had a glowing hourglass symbol on his forehead; Stan figured that was probably what made him a time baby.
“Well, somebody’s being a Mr. Crankypants,” Mabel was saying. “Did you not have your nap this morning?”
“I could vaporize you where you stand,” Time Baby boomed menacingly. Well, as menacing as he could be while he was trying to stick his foot in his mouth.
“You could,” Mabel agreed, looking very unworried for someone who just had a freakishly giant baby threaten to blow her up. “But if you used your laser vision and turned me into a pile of dust, then what would happen to these num-nums?” Mabel reached into her bag and pulled out a big plastic bag full of cookies.
“Do not think you can bribe me,” Time Baby said, but his hands were already making grabby motions at the bag.
“It’s not a bribe,” Mabel said, handing the opened bag of cookies over. Time Baby immediately dumped the whole thing into his mouth, getting crumbs and a couple whole cookies everywhere. “I already accomplished the two things I wanted to in the past: punching Filbrick in the face, and getting pictures of Stan and Ford in their sweaters. I’m totally good to go home now.”
“Very well. I will let you off with a warning this time,” Time Baby said. “But only because I am a benevolent time dictator. Not because of the cookies.”
“Of course,” Mabel agreed. “Okay, let me just say good-bye and then we can be on our way.”
“Not so fast,” Time Baby said. “I too had two objectives in coming here. The first to retrieve you, but the second was to wipe the memories of your visit from the minds of Stanley and Stanford Pines.”
“What?!” Stan, Ford, and Mabel objected, all at almost the exact same time.
“You can’t do that! Can he?” Stan asked, looking at Mabel.
“Well, he definitely has actual memory wipes that aren’t baby wipes,” Mabel answered. “But morally it’s wrong.”
“I am well aware of your family’s objection to memory erasure. But I am not some bumbling human inventor-“
“Hey!” Mabel protested, but Time Baby continued right over her.
“And furthermore, erasing their memory is necessary. You cannot comprehend the damage done to the timeline by the two of them finding out about time travel this young.”
“Oh,” Mabel said, looking back at them. More at Ford than him, Stan thought, and wouldn’t it be just like Ford, that nerd, to start trying to invent time travel after this. “I didn’t accidentally erase myself from existence did I?”
“Not this time,” Time Baby said. “But your family in the form that you know it will no longer exist if these two are allowed to retain their memories.”
“Alright,” Mabel half-sighed. “I’ll handle this.” She turned around and knelt down on the ground in front of Stan and Ford.
“Are you going to make us let him erase our memories?” Ford asked.
“The way I see it we got three options. We can let him erase your memories. We can try and fight him, but he’ll win and erase your memories anyway. Or we can run, and he’ll eventually catch us and erase your memories anyway,” Mabel said.
“So you’re saying we ain’t even got a chance?” Stan asked.
“Hey, we’re Pines, we always have a chance. Just not a very good one right now. And I’ll be honest, I love my family just the way they are; I don’t want to lose them. But they’re your memories, so it’s your call. Whatever you guys want to do, I’m with you,” Mabel said. And she seemed like she really did mean it. Ma and Pa, especially Pa, would never let Stan and Ford make a decision this big. They’d just tell them what to do and expect them to do it without asking questions.
“He’s just going to erase the memory of you showing up, right? He’s not going to erase our whole brains or nothing, right?” said Stan.
“If I thought he was going to be erasing your whole minds, then we’d definitely be making a break for it,” Mabel said. Time Baby cleared his throat warningly but Mabel was uncowed. “Hey, that means I have faith in you to not be a bigger jerk then you have to be. It’s a compliment.”
“And we can get our memories back later, right?” Ford said. “Time Baby said it damages the timeline if we know about time travel now, but you can remind us when we’re older.”
“I’ll definitely make sure you’ll remember. I’ve dealt with way worse cases of memory erasure than this. Plus I’ve got photographic evidence of the two of you in the sweaters I made you. Piece of cake,” Mabel assured them.
“If you gave them those sweaters then we cannot leave them here,” Time Baby said.
“What? Why not?” Stan asked. He liked this sweater.
“Such a blatant reminder of Mabel’s visit would interfere with the memory wipes effectiveness,” said Time Baby. Oh. Yeah, Stan guessed that made sense.
“So what’ll it be, dudes?” Mabel asked.
Stan and Ford looked at each other and then nodded. “He can erase our memory,” Stan said, while Ford pulled off his sweater.
Mabel took both their sweaters and carefully folded them and put them back in her bag. “Thanks. And I want you both to remember something. Not up here, but in here,” she said, pointing first at her head and then her chest. “No matter how bad things get, it’s all going to be okay in the end. Heck, it’s all going to be great in the end! So if it’s not okay, then it’s not the end. You got that?”
“Got it,” Stan and Ford said.
“Good. Now give me hug goodbye because I love you,” Mabel said, holding her arms open. It was a little weird because they didn’t really know her, but they gave her a hug anyway. She was probably crazy, but also pretty awesome.
“Before you go, can you tell us who you are and how you know us?” Ford asked.
“Well duh, knuckleheads,” Mabel said as she backed up to stand by Time Baby. “I’m your family.”
“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” Stan chanted softly under his breath. It had to work this time, it had to. “C’mon you stupid piece of…”Stan flipped the final switch. Nothing happened. Not even a little spark like something was trying to happen and couldn’t. Just nothing.
Stan gave a wordless scream of frustration and chucked Ford’s stupid book across the room. He shouldn’t even be down here right now. He should be upstairs figuring out the arrangements for Shermie’s funeral. Because Shermie was dead. Shermie was dead, Ma was dead, Pa was dead, and Ford had been gone for over twenty years and he was probably dead too. It was just stupid, talentless, screw-up Stanley left, all alone. What was the point of even trying to fix this machine up anymore? It’s not like he was ever going to fix it. It’s not like Ford would be coming back even if he did. What was even the point of anything at all anymore?
It’s all going to be okay in the end.
Stan must have heard hundreds, even thousands, of cheesy quotes and sayings like that in his life. He’d known some guys back in his days on the road that collected them like treasures, like they proved all the junk that the world put them through meant something. Stan hated the whole thing, just like he hated all those stupid sayings. Except for maybe that one. For some reason that particular saying had stuck with him through the years. He didn’t remember where he’d first heard it anymore, but somehow it kept popping up from somewhere inside him time after time on his ugliest days.
“It’s not okay,” Stan said, but the words that were meant to be loud and defiant got swallowed up by the open room until they sounded as small and worthless as he felt.
Stan sighed heavily, then went to go pick up his brother’s journal. “So I guess that means this isn’t the end.”