Chapter Text
It was a cold blue day in January, and a cardinal was singing in a stand of black birch when a violent green puncture appeared in the crisp air above its head. For an instant, the five bodies that emerged floated above the bare branches in a nearly angelic repose. When they plummeted to the ground, it was with a sharp snapping of wood and a series of dull thuds on contact. The cardinal shrieked with indignation and took flight in a puff of scarlet feathers.
"Owww." On the edge of the group, Morty Smith sat up and rubbed the side of his head where it had knocked against the packed dirt. He was lucky, he noticed, that he had avoided any of the chunks of granite sticking up from the soil. That alone was odd— the ground at home in Seattle didn't look like this. His breath puffed out in front of him, and he racked his brain to remember the previous minutes. A deep burgundy, perhaps a nothingness, or a mouth gaping below his suspended body, his mother's yell, a sharp yank— and before then, the garage, and the vibrant green stone his grandfather had brought back from The Wasteland a few weeks prior.
"R-Rick?" Morty's voice trembled. He looked around them, at the forms of his parents and sister, all in some stage of blinking and sitting up, and the bare trees around them. Outside of their birch thicket, the ground was blanketed in white.
"Ye-yeah, Morty." His grandfather had landed several yards away; he picked his lean limbs out of the indents his impact had left in the snow. He squinted at the sky and blinked unpleasantly, the drool on his chin glistening in the cold sunlight. "Oh, God."
"Rick," Morty said. "Where are we?"
"I-If you must know, Morty, we are in some deep shit. Some deep shit, Morty." Rick extended an arm and pushed up the sleeve of his white lab coat; a panel in the arm opened to reveal a sleek scanning device. He tapped the keypad and squinted at the small screen as the scanner whirred to life. "Well," he said. "It could be a lot worse. Dimension Terra-1692, Morty. Earth-like. With some" —he let out a prodigious belch— "minor differences."
Morty's eyes and mouth doubled in size as he shrilled, "What do you mean, minor differences?!"
"The universe is identical to C-131," Rick said as the scanner stowed itself neatly in his forearm and the panel slid closed. He pushed the sleeve of his lab coat down. "But stuck in an eternal loop of the Earth Year 1692. And if my coordinates are correct —of which I" —another belch— "have no doubt, we are half a mile outside of Sa-Salem Village. So- so we may indeed be fucked, Morty." He wiped his chin with his sleeve and glared. "Th-this is what you get for messing with my shit, Morty. Putting your fucking" —belch— "greasy mitts on my portal gun and my time travel box. I thought you le-learned your lesson with the mountain dew, Morty."
Morty glared back. "Th-this was all you, Rick! I remember! You had the portal gun and the green rock from The Wasteland, and you-"
"Excuse me." Morty turned and saw his father sitting up completely, a hand rubbing at the nape of his neck. Jerry pulled a smile that parted his lips and teeth while reaching nothing but the crow's feet around his eyes. "I couldn't help but overhear-"
"Shut up, Jerry," Rick said, and fresh saliva bubbled onto his chin again.
Jerry pressed on. "I couldn't help but overhear you say Salem Village. And, uh, 1692." He let out a breathy little laugh. "Why are we here, Rick? What would... possess you to bring my family here?"
Morty turned to Jerry. "Wh-why? What's in Salem Village- in 1692?"
"Oh my God, Morty," Summer said. She was sitting up, too. "Did you do anything in history class besides ogle down that girl's shirts?"
"Hey," Jerry said, though there was no conviction in it. "Be nice to your brother."
"It's the Salem Witch Trials," Summer said. "When all these religious freaks had seizures and killed a bunch of women they blamed for them."
"Oh," Morty said. "Rick, why would you send us here?!"
"I-It wasn't me, Morty," Rick answered. "The portal gun malfunctioned. I was adding Isotope-322 to the portal fluid —to theoretically in-" —belch—"-crease the efficiency of one vial. It must have corrupted and broken the localized spatial-temporal continuum. We all floated outerdimensionally f-for however long it took until the isotope calibrated." He squinted into the winter sun, which made him look more mature and introspective than he was ever capable of being. "The system must have calibrated with the isotope's decay signature. And the closest match was Terra-1692."
"Dad," Beth interjected. She had been silent until then, watching the conversation unfold. "Do you know how to get us home?"
"I have an idea," Rick said.
"Can we get shelter?" Beth asked. "It's going to be night sooner or later."
"We'll have to go down to the village," Rick said. His squint had turned unpleasant again. "E-Everyone hold still." He reached into the pocket of his lab coat and pulled out a black fob. It emitted a green laser light when he pressed a button. He aimed it at the line of the Smiths in turn. Morty felt the fabric of his shirt thicken and stretch. The fabric climbed down his arms and up his neck while his pants and shoes cinched. He looked down and found himself clothed in a dull blue jerkin and a linen undershirt; he wore scratchy wool hose and gartered stockings that cinched too tightly below his knees.
"Aw, jeez, Rick," he whined. "Do I have to wear this?" He looked at Summer, who was tugging at the white cap that covered her hair. Like most other overtures he made, she rejected it, rolling her eyes at him and turning to Beth.
"If you-If you don't want to be burned at the stake, Morty," Rick belched. He himself was dressed in a charcoal doublet and a white shirt, but both were unbuttoned at the top, revealing his gray chest hair, and his posture was decidedly slouched, his hands stuffed entirely in the pockets. He looked down at Morty and smirked.
"I dunno," Jerry said amiably. "I kinda like it." He held his arms out and smiled down at his own muted ensemble, stiff with starch.
"Jerry," Beth said. "You took history classes in college, right?"
"Ummm," Jerry answered. "Yes?"
"You would know how to approach these people," Beth said. "So they let us in?"
"I-" Jerry said, and the smile started to return before he saw the rest of the group looking at him expectantly. "I'll figure something out," he said. "I- I took a class in Colonial America."
"That fills me with so much confidence," Rick said, and they started down the washboard slope of the land, towards the spot where vague ribbons of smoke rose from the silhouettes of chimneys, down to the rooftops of Salem Village.