In a bright flash of light, Stanford was gone. Stan got up from the ground just in time to see his brother's glasses fall to the dirt in front of him.
He'd made a terrible mistake.
"Stanford, come back, I didn't mean it!" Stan ran up to the mysterious machine and banged on it, panic building as he heard the machine powering down. There had to be a way to turn it back on, to get his brother back – the lever!
He pulled on it with all his might, but nothing happened. The machine remained off, and his brother remained gone, possibly forever. And it was all his fault.
There had to be a way to get him back. What did he say it was, a something-dimensional portal? It sounded like something far above his pay grade. He said his journals explained how to operate it; yes, the journal Stanford had given him! Stanley scrambled over to it and began tearing through the pages, looking for something, anything on that portal.
There were pages on floating cliffs, unicorns… even a manual override mechanism for the portal.
"Damn it, Poindexter! I wanna turn it on, not off!" He then came across a page of a drawing that looked like the bottom half of the portal. Stanley frowned and continued, finally flipping over to the last page:
CONTINUED IN JOURNAL #2
There was nothing about turning the portal on. Nothing about getting his brother back. Stanley gripped the book and made to throw it away, but at the last second he sighed and stood up, holding it to his chest. "Calm down, Stanley. You can't loose your temper again. You need to think, think!"
He began taking his jacket off, but as he did he noticed the charred hole in the back. Stan frowned in confusion and stuck his hand through it. "What is this, some sort of hole? Was this always here?" He reached behind and ran a hand over his back, eyes widening as he felt something hot and leathery where the hole in his jacket had been. "Oh no…"
Ten minutes later, Stan had found a bathroom and a couple mirrors to examine the damage. His skin had been burned blotchy and orange into the shape of a strange mark. It didn't hurt, but Stan knew from experience that wasn't an encouraging sign.
What was he gonna do? He couldn't go to the hospital; not only would he never be able to afford the bills, there was no way he'd be able to explain what had happened. He could lie, sure, but it'd require something pretty creative and he wasn't feeling up to that right now. The most he could do was put a bandage over it and hope for the best.
First aid supplies were in abundance around his brother's shack, which made Stan somewhat worried about what Stanford had been up to in the last ten years. He cut off a large strip of bandage, thinking of his brother's paranoid demeanor. 'I've made huge mistakes,' He'd said. 'This portal could easily be used for great evil,' He'd said.
Where exactly had he sent Stanford to?
"More importantly, how am I gonna get him back," Stan secured the last bandage and pulled out the journal, turning to the last page. "He said he hid the other journals somewhere, but how am I supposed to find them? If only there was another way to figure out how to open that portal…"
As he said that, his eye fell on a book sitting by the toilet: 'Code Breaking 101'
"Bingo," Stan grinned as he picked it up, flipping through the pages. "Only my nerdy brother would keep something like this in the bathroom."
After a long day of reading, code breaking, tinkering… he was no closer to getting his brother back. Stan barely managed to get the machine to so much as spark; he needed the other journals, and he knew it. Eventually he forced himself to stop and go upstairs, change his bandages and find the nearest bedroom.
It was his brother's bedroom, a large, dark, cold room with more research apparatus than actual bed. Stan shivered as he lay down on the stiff sheets, looking out at the raging snowstorm outside.
After some time, Stan sighed and picked up his brother's glasses, watching them shine in the dim light. "This is hopeless. How am I ever gonna get you back, Stanford? Where'd you hide those journals?"
He looked past the glasses, to the storm raging outside. "Somewhere out there? I'd never find them in all that snow. No, I'll have to try with the journal I've got. There's gotta be a way to figure it out!"
Stan sat up and made for the portal; it wasn't like he was going to get any sleep tonight anyway. "I don't care how long it takes, I'm gonna fix this. I'm gonna get my brother back."