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The softly falling snow outside gave the cabin a cozy calm appearance which was in sharp contrast to what was happening indoors.
Stanley Pines had already read the journal cover to cover multiple times over and all it brought him was a few false starts with the portal. It had taken him too long to realize that the fault laid with the journal and not necessarily with himself. There were gaps, holes of knowledge that he would have to figure out how to cross. And so Stan began to tear apart the cabin to dig out any other pieces of information.
His brother had not made things easy for him. Notebooks and papers and scribbled on napkins were littered everywhere in the house. Ford had only been slightly more organized than Stan was when they were kids and that usually was at their mother’s insistence, but this was getting ridiculous. Already he had to deal with three separate avalanches of papers over the past week that left Stan feeling bruised and sore. He didn’t want to stop though, he had to get his twin back. But he was starting to feel like he was truly in over his head this time.
There was cascade of dust as Stanley pulled down another box from the closet. Stifling back a coughing fit he carefully opened it, revealing tightly packed books with ugly covers. Just the same as the rest of the boxes. He thumbed through the imaginatively named Advanced Engineering Mathematics and felt his heart sink as unrecognizable words and diagrams fluttered before his eyes. He swallowed that feeling down and pick up another book. The Spell of Mathematics. He set that one aside as well. Elementary Nuclear Theory. Set aside. Plasma Physics. Set aside. The Expanding Universe. Aside.
“I get it, you’re a genius.” Stanley sunk to the floor, latest book still in hand. The External Degree. “And I’m not,” he said to no one as he tossed the book aside.
He knew getting the portal running again would require following along in his brother’s footsteps, but he had expected, hoped really, that there would be a list somewhere. A step by step guide that even an idiot like himself could follow and bring his brother safely home. But all he was finding was incomprehensible notes, books on subjects he never knew existed, and some worn out pictures of some guy named Tesla. Nothing that would tell him what to do.
Stan gazed around himself at all the cardboard boxes around him, each in various stages of unpacked. This was Ford’s life, Ford’s domain, and there was nothing here for a homeless high school dropout.
He fell flat on his back and stared up at the ceiling. “I don’t know what to do.” He wasn’t even sure if he was laughing or crying. “All I ever do is make mistakes I can’t fix.” He ran his hands over his face, his palms becoming wet. “I’m sorry Ford. I didn’t want this. I’m so sorry.”
Stanley didn’t know how long he laid there but eventually the dust settling uncomfortably in the back of his throat prompted him to get up. He felt dull and worn and tired. There wasn’t much hope left in his chest. Hope had always been a fickle companion to Stanley, urging him on to roll the dice just one more time, only to leave him like a bird fleeing a cage when the numbers came up wrong. This time while it hadn’t left fully, it wasn’t bothering to sing its sweet song, and he noted the quiet.
He started to slowly pack the books up. Maybe he could try the lever again, maybe one more time would do it. That was something he could do, use his muscles and not think, that was all he was good for after all.
There was a slight rattling sound and sturdy resistance as he shoved one of the boxes into the back of a closet. Yet another box? Probably filled with more books that did nothing but mock his stupidity and not help him in the slightest. But he reached into the back to drag it out anyways.
It wasn’t as heavy or as big as the other cardboard boxes; and the slight rattle sounded more like plastic than hardcover to Stanley’s ears. Curious he opened the box to find not books but the matte black sides of seven video cassettes.
Stanley had never seen video cassettes in person before, he had only ever heard about them from newspapers and radio. They were lighter than he expected, weighing hardly anything in his hand. He pulled one sideways out of its sleeve and was greeted by a simple white label on the face with the number 1 and 2 in handwriting he was certain wasn’t his brother’s. Further inspection showed that all the tapes were labeled like that, up to number 13, but no clue as to what the tapes held. The only other thing in the box was an old note stating “Stanford watch this -F” in that handwriting he didn’t recognize.
The faint fluttering song of hope got Stan to look for the VCR machine he was sure Ford must have owned. The books so far had been a dead end, but literally anything could be on these tapes, and whoever this ‘F’ person was they must have been a friend. And maybe this friend knew about the portal and the video was a step by step guide that Stan could follow to put it back together!
It was with this thought Stan roughly shoved the books off the top of the VCR, slammed his hand against the buttons until he found the one that turned the damn thing on, popped in the first tape, and sat on floor only a few feet from the screen.
At first there was nothing, nothing to the point that Stan worried that maybe he had messed up the tape somehow, but then there was a faint strum of music and a red star field. Stan sat there waiting eagerly, but as the second ticked by he started to question if this is what he had hoped for. It didn’t seem like Ford’s style as far as he remembered, not this slow introduction and panning shots of stars and the ocean. He was always more to the point, not wasting time on anything artistic for its own sake.
Stan started to get up from the floor to pull out the tape and call it yet another failure when a calm and soothing voice came out of the speakers.
“The Cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be.”
He pulled back and saw a man he didn’t recognize on the screen, someone a little older than himself with floppy hair and a jacket talking about science. Stan’s instincts told him he might as well just shut it off. He didn’t know anything about science, that was Ford’s realm. He might as well not bother. He would never understand it anyways.
But something about the man in the video held Stan back. He was smiling, as if he was happy and lighthearted about the universe of which he spoke, not the quiet seriousness he brother had always tried to insist on when he was a child. And the voice was kind and patient, not at all like Stan’s teachers, who always seemed annoyed with his mere presence. No, this man almost seemed to speak to Stanley as if he was right there before him and believed in him.
“That’s ridiculous,” Stan muttered to himself as he sat back on the floor. “It’s just a recording.”
But Stan sat there and watched.
And he remembered.
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The New Jersey sun fell hot against the metal railings of the fire escape, but Stanley was too enthralled by the pictures in the book to notice. How could he not with all the images of stars and animals and oceans and dinosaurs and just everything! Sure he might have been too young to read the more complicated words but he could still appreciate the pictures easy enough.
His mother had taken him and Stanford to their very first trip to the library yesterday and had allowed them to pick out one book to bring home. Stan had quickly picked out a picture book of superheroes but Ford had taken a lot longer before finally picking out a science book even though he was no more ahead with his reading skills than his twin.
And while the superhero book was fun, Stanley was equally drawn to his brother’s book. But it wasn’t until Ford went to help their mother with lunch that Stan had a moment to look at it for himself.
He was just turning the page to a section about boats when the window to his room slammed open, causing Stan to almost drop the book over the edge of the fire escape.
“What the hell you do you think you’re doing!?” Filbrick’s voice echoed down the street as he spotted his son.
“N-nothing, I was just looking at the book.” Stanley stammered though he wasn’t sure why. What could he have done this time that made his father so angry?
“That’s not yours!” Filbrick yelled as he roughly tore the book from his son’s hands. “That’s Ford’s, it’s not for you!”
Stan cowered against the fire escape, the warm metal noticeable even through his shirt. “B-but I was just looking that it.”
“You’re a thief, that’s what you are! Taking things that aren’t meant for you! Now get back inside before I really get angry!”
Stan quietly and obediently crawled back through the window into his noticeably colder bedroom. He didn’t look at his father and his father didn’t look at him.
“Here,” Filbrick said gruffly as he carelessly tossed the book to the only other person in the room before leaving: Ford.
Ford clutched the book to his chest, his eyes looking red and puffy.
“Sixer…?” Stan didn’t understand why his brother looked so upset.
“Why did you take my book?” Ford sniffed.
“I just wanted to look at it.”
“Then you should have picked it instead! It wasn’t yours! It was mine!” Ford yelled as he stormed out of the bedroom with his book.
Stanley stared after his brother, still not understanding.
It’s not yours.
But everyone was so angry that he looked at a science book.
It’s not meant for you.
Were they mad because he wasn’t supposed to like that stuff?
It’s Ford’s.
Then he wouldn’t do it again.
You’re just a thief.
Not ever.
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Stanley didn’t know how long he stayed indoors watching the tapes. As soon as once finished he immediately popped in another. He was completely enthralled in a way he hadn’t been in decades.
And he didn’t feel guilty for it.
He watched until the end, when the last dandelion seed flew and the last stars past by and the tape clicked signifying the end. Then he sat there staring at the blank screen, his mind turning over everything he had just seen.
Once upon a time he had been a young child, barely five years old, he had been interested in science and was punished for it. For decades he suppressed that side of him, dismissing it as nerd stuff that belonged solely to his brother.
But now it felt like a spark had been reignited in a way no science class or pushy brother could have unearthed.
Stan picked up one of the random books and flipped through it again. It was the same formulas and diagrams he didn’t know, but maybe he -could- know them. He could learn! He already felt like he learned more in the past however many hours than he had over the course of his entire life. It didn’t even seem all that bad at all.
He never believed he was smart, and no one ever did anything to challenge that notion. But Stan felt like maybe that Carl Sagan did, and that was enough for Stanley.
“Okay,” he said as he laid the book back down and went to grab his jacket. “Let’s do this.”
He had a library to find.
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The waves lapped against the Stan O War as Ford tightened the last mooring line. It had been a good research day and he would have a lot to go over late into the night. Any other time he would have dove right in, but this evening was one Stanley had already made plans for and Ford wasn’t going to disappoint his brother, especially considering what exactly Stan wanted to do. It was curious for sure.
“Are you done out there?” Stan yelled from the wheelhouse, the scent of fresh popcorn drifting out the doorway.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Ford said as went inside, grabbing a handful of popcorn as he sat down.
Stan had the laptop up and running already. Usually they broke it out for their weekly chat with the younger twins, but this was a special event. At least that’s what it sounded like by the way Stanley had been going on for weeks.
“How’s the reception?” Stan asked as he grabbed the salt and some glasses of water.
“It looks clear to me,” Ford said as some program he wasn’t familiar with played on the screen without lag or tearing.
“Good good, I don’t want anything to mess this up,” Stan said as he sat down and checked his watch. “We got a little bit of time.” He nervously drummed his fingers on the table, waiting.
Ford watched him for a moment. “Not that I don’t appreciate you inviting me for this, but I am curious.”
“Curious about what?” Stan asked around a mouthful of popcorn.
Ford gestured to the screen. “Well, this. I never would have guessed you’d be this excited to watch it.”
“Oh what, I’m not allowed to watch things with my brother?” Stan’s voice was light and joking, but there was a faint edge to his voice that told Ford this wasn’t something to be teased about.
“No no, that’s not what I meant,” Ford said quickly. “I mean you are more excited than I am and I’m the resident nerd here.”
Stan shrugged. “Just thought it would be something you were interested in.”
“Me?” Ford almost laughed. “You sounded like Mabel with a new Sev’ral Timez album when you found out about the listing. I barely understood you at first.”
Stan rubbed the back of his head. “It’s not a big deal. Don’t read too much into it.”
“WAY too late for that.” Ford reached for more popcorn. “Come on Stan, nothing you could say would be nerdy to me.”
Stan was quiet for a moment and when he spoke his voice was quieter than Ford anticipated. “Look, I...the portal wasn’t easy to get working, especially at the start. I had no idea what to do to get you back.”
Ford gulped. They had talked about the portal before, but Stan had always danced around the topic of what it was like at the beginning. He rubbed his brother’s back as he talked.
“You probably don’t remember,” Stan continued, “But there had been a set of tapes left in the back of one of the closets at the shack, the original Cosmos. Fiddleford I think left them there, though I didn’t know that at the time. But either way I was feeling like this whole thing was well over my head. I was a high school dropout, I had nothing to get me started, to work off of.
“But then I watched those tapes and...I don’t know, something changed. I felt like maybe...maybe I could do this. That just maybe I could do something right if I just tried. I felt like even if I didn’t believe in me, Carl Sagan believed in me. And you know what else?”
“What?”
“I also remembered. I remembered I liked to look at your nerdy science books.”
Ford raised an eyebrow. “I don’t remember you ever taking an interest in my books.”
Stan chuckled. “We were about 4, maybe 5 at the time. But the point is that I had forgotten that I used to be curious too. And then I remembered. And I started to think that maybe if I was curious, then maybe I wasn’t as dumb as people said I was.”
“No one said-”
“Don’t lie to me Ford. I know I was called dumb cause I called myself that plenty of times. But for a little while at least I thought I could do something to change that. Honestly, I don’t know how I ever could have gotten the portal working without watching those tapes, I really don’t. I don’t want to think that I would have given up, but I can’t imagine you being here now if I didn’t watch Cosmos the first time around. I just really feel like I owe a lot to it.”
Ford was stunned into silence. He could only vaguely recall a box that Fiddleford had brought with him from Palo Alto that Ford always meant to get around to watching before shoving it into a closet. He didn’t always see eye to eye with Carl Sagan or his research, not like Fiddleford did, and so he never felt the urge to watch Cosmos. And hearing now how important it was to Stanley, and to himself, he felt guilty about never watching it.
“You still have those tapes back at the shack?” Ford finally asked.
“I think so, why?”
“Just thinking, maybe this summer could watch them to-”
“Shhhh! It’s starting!” Stan shushed as a soothing voice came over the speakers.
“ The Cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be.”