Prologue

June 17th, 2018

Toby Determined had discovered a most perplexing mystery. Too bad no one else in Gravity Falls seemed to care.

"Don't you see, there's something big here!" he insisted, hawking his latest issue of the Gravity Falls Gossiper to disinterested, mildly amused townsfolk. "People don't just break into buildings unless they're up to something.

As usual, the townsfolk indulged the weird, eccentric little man with the overalls and the cat whiskers and the grating voice without taking anything he said seriously.

"Dude, someone broke into the Museum of History and stole nothing," Mayor Cutebiker insisted. "That's not interesting."

"But it is interesting!" Toby wailed, causing the Mayor to cringe. "Someone broke into a building without stealing anything? A public building filled with records and files? Surely that's a mystery..."

Sheriff Blubbs interrupted. "The only mystery here is why anyone would break into the Museum at night. Isn't it boring enough there during the day?"

The townsfolk laughed in agreement. Toby shook his head.

"I know I'm right!" he insisted. "Maybe if we looked into it more..."

"You mean like you were right about the possums holding the Mayor hostage?" Sheriff Blubbs commented. "Turns out that he was just on vacation."

Toby lowered his head, blushing. "I saw him in a room with a bunch of furry things..."

"Those were cats, Toby," Mayor Cutebiker said. "I was visiting my aunt."

"Even if it were a story, which it ain't, Shaundra Jimenez would have covered it on TV!" Sheriff Blubb's sidekick and partner, Deputy Darland, interjected.

Toby was stung by memories of his old rival, more recent coworker and not-so-secret crush. Even after their short-lived partnership on TV news, she hadn't warmed to the weird little man with his poorly-concealed affection. Still, he had called Shaundra about his suspicions before running his story about the break-in, feeling it better to have the story aired than to gain glory for himself.

Shaundra had laughed, a sour laughter born of annoyance with someone she'd spent the past decade mocking, ignoring and avoiding. "Toby, I have an interview with Preston Northwest tomorrow morning!" she said. "A Senate race, especially one involving one of the town's former bigwigs, is far more interesting than a third-rate burglary at a museum."

Then she hung up, the echo of the clicking phone ringing in Toby's ears even as the Mayor and the police and everyone laughed at him again.

"Oh marbles!" he warbled over their laughter, dropping his cheaply-printed newspapers into the street. He walked back towards his office, passing a huge sign on the local feed store:

FOR SENATE 2018

PRESTON NORTHWEST

MAKE OREGON THE BEST

Nobody had ever taken Toby seriously in his life. Never had anyone believed in him: not as a middling student, not as a dancer, a reporter, even as a member of the Society of the Blind Eye (not that he could remember that experience, anyway). He was always the joke, the guy with a cinder block camera and a turkey baster microphone, the cheap hat that he may or may not have stolen off a department store mannequin. Even when he rocked an awesome mohawk and battled Time Demons as Bodacious T, people laughed at him.

That had been six years ago, during the summer the town had forgotten by decree and universal consent. It was June 2019, and he was the only person in Gravity Falls who cared about the burglary. Perhaps because he had seen it unfold.

One evening, he returned from a late night coffee at Greasy's Diner, scrawling notes on a story about the latest Gnome sightings near the local gas station. (What use gnomes had for gasoline was anyone's guess; they never stuck around to be interviewed.) As he walked past the Museum, a squat brick building with forbidding marble columns out front, he spotted a shadowy figure sneaking out the front door with a dark bag.

Toby inched as close as he dared, trying to gain a glimpse of the man. He was tall, his head shaved bald, impeccably dressed in a blue-gray suit. There goes the possibility that he was a janitor or a maintenance guy; why would one of them wear such a snazzy outfit? Yet he didn't seem like a run-of-the-mill criminal either; for one, the Museum of History likely didn't have anything more valuable than some candy sticks, pop guns and a few twenties in the cash register. And certainly he was the most well-heeled burglar Toby had ever seen.

Toby had called the police, and the found the office slightly askew but nothing obviously missing. They wrote it off as a prank or an amateur and refused to listen to Toby's demands that it portended something more serious.

Toby, nonetheless, decided that he had to find the truth. Even if everyone in town laughed at him.

His preliminary investigation achieved little. He visited the Museum of History during its visiting hours, perused the collections of documents and historical displays he'd glanced more times than he could count. He didn't know much more about history than he needed for his annual story on the town's Pioneer Days. Perhaps the research clerk, a lanky twenty-something named Charles Huston, could help.

"Young man, do you work here?" he asked.

"Sure do! Can I help you?" Charles asked with a smile.

"Have you noticed whether any files have gone missing from your collection lately?"

The smile disappeared from Charles' face. "My God, there are always files missing," he moaned, throwing up his hands. "Somebody will come in, make a copy and forget to return the original. Somebody throws away a birth record without realizing what it is. Somebody takes the cemetery list you spend weeks working on and spits their gum into it. All kinds of stuff."

Toby decided the cranky clerk wouldn't be much help. He asked Charles' boss, a cheery middle-aged woman named Mary, to provide a catalog of library files. He took it back to the library and compared the list to the files at hand. After about an hour of searching, he found eight file folders were missing and jotted them down, then did a bit more research, hoping he'd find something more helpful. After awhile, he dragged himself back to his office.

Toby snacked on half an egg salad sandwich and some cold store brand coffee, his notes spread across his desk. He spent the next several hours trying to make sense of everything he'd gathered together.

"Eight folders missing," he muttered out loud, rubbing his eyes as he looked at the clock. Half past ten. His stomach growled, his eyes sagged, his arms shrugged from weariness. He hadn't found anything and started to wonder, despite himself, whether everyone was right about him...

"Which files are missing?" he muttered. "Adams family file...?" He knew Jack Adams, who had been the town attorney for a brief period of time, but had joined a law practice in Salem a few years ago. He doubted there was anything interesting there.

"Barbecue missing..." A larcenous chef? The thought amused him, but he discarded it as a likely possibility.

"Corduroy...Hmm!" This did raise an eyebrow.

Of course, Toby knew the Corduroys very well: Manly Dan, local lumberjack and hulking town tough, his now-equally hulking sons, and Wendy Corduroy, now 21, who was studying photography at Gravity Falls Community College. He remembered Wendy from their short-lived alliance in the darkest days of Weirdmageddon, where they'd battled past Bill Cipher's demon crew to take refuge in a mall-turned-fort. He remembered the oversized teen girl fondly, but doubted that she had the same thoughts about him.

Either way, it was something. And he made a note to contact Dan or Wendy when the opportunity next presented itself.

Eventually, he found another odd listing: "Labor history - strikes and violence." He struggled to piece together memories of whether there had been any major strikes in town, but nothing came to mind. He did remember, vaguely, from a college course that the local lumberjacks had tried repeatedly to form a union in the early 20th Century, but nothing came of the idea until the mid-30s, when the New Deal made such organizations fashionable. Exactly why was something of a mystery, of interest to labor historians but not to casual researchers or the average Joe - and not, until now, Toby Determined.

Slowly, the gears started turning in Toby's mind, the rush of piecing a story - a mystery - together. But it still didn't make sense to him. What was so important in Gravity Falls' history that they needed to break into a museum to steal it? It didn't make sense. But that only made him more determined to find the truth.

Toby was enough of a reporter that he still experienced hunches. After finishing up at the office, he briefly debate whether to sneak into Greasy's for a quick bite - his egg salad having curdled into slime, his coffee long gone - he decided to revisit the Museum of History, wondering if - hoping that - the perpetrator might return to the scene of the crime. At the very least, maybe he could find some clue that he'd missed during the day.

Toby approached the Museum, then noticed something suspicious: the door was shut, but there was a piece of tape on the lock. He leaned forward and squeezed the knob, which opened. Toby took a deep breath, regretting that he'd left his .38 back at the office, wondering whether someone absurd enough to break into a history museum would be dangerous or merely a crank.

He tiptoed into the museum, past the familiar exhibits of miners and covered wagons and the horrors of dysentery. There were a few dim footlights on, a sign that someone was here. Maybe it was just a security guard? But then why would they have fidgeted with the lock?

Finally he made his way back to the research library, noticing that the door was wide open. He heard metallic clicking noises inside, the rustle of pipers. Toby crept down the hallway, his heart in his throat, and slowly peered around the door...

He saw that all the room's filing cabinets jimmied open, a few files and boxes of materials piled up on the floor, with surprising, almost anal retentive orderliness. In the dim light he saw the silhouette of a man examining a small box, then placing it into a bag. He squinted through the darkness, struggling to make the figure out...

"YAH!" Toby tripped over his own feet and hit his head off the doorknob. He groaned and rubbed his forehead. "Oh, marbles!"

"Who the hell are you?" the man in the room barked. He looked up and saw, looming over him, the man he'd seen the other night: wearing the same blue-gray suit, the bald head and imposing black mustache. This time he noticed his steely blue eyes, boring into him.

Toby staggered to his feet, trembling. He decided there wasn't anything to lose...might as well bluff him.

"I was about to ask you the same question!" he said, in what he imagined was an authoritative voice. But his voice and body quavered, betraying his insecurity. The bald man just smiled.

"Are you affiliated with the Museum?" he said, placing the bag on the ground. "I can assure you, this isn't what it looks like."

"I am indeed a member of the Board of Directors!" Toby said, trying to contain his abject terror. (Well, he had donated $60 several years ago and become an honorary member of the Museum, so it was only a lie in the strictest sense.) "And I demand to know who you are and what you're doing here."

"Neither of those are important," he said. The evenness of his voice belied his menace. "Or at least it's not important that you know. This is something much bigger than either you or I, and it's important that you trust me in saying that."

Toby's mind raced with ideas. Had he uncovered some dread government or corporate experiment? If so, to cover up what? Things that had happened a century ago in a hick town somewhere in Oregon?

"I'm of a mind to call the police!" Toby squawked. The bald man simply shook his head.

"That wouldn't do either of us any good," he said. He took a step towards Toby, who stumbled back into the hallway. The man started to reach into his suit pocket...

"Hold it right there, baldy!" someone snapped. Toby looked and saw, to his relief, Sheriff Blubbs and Deputy Durland with guns drawn.

"Put your hands where I can see them!" Blubbs said. Surprised, the bald man raised his hands slowly over his head.

"If you'd let me explain..." he began.

"There's plenty of time for that later, punk!" Blubbs interrupted, with more authority in his voice than usual. "You're under arrest for breaking and entering."

"DO I GET TO TAZE HIM!?" Durland said, practically quivering with excitement. Blubbs sighed; the moment was ruined.

"We'll see, buddy," the Sheriff said, patting his Deputy on the shoulder. "Right now, we need to make an arrest."

"Yeah, but you don't look like the ones who can do it," the bald man intoned.

Before anyone could move, he snapped out a strange-looking device, a black rod with two electrodes at the end. It fired two propulsive charges into the policemen, sending them writhing to the ground in agony before they passed out.

Toby screamed as the bald man moved in, trying to recharge his gun.

"And they said to turn myself in if the Police caught me," he growled. "Everything would be sorted out. Well, there are men I'd take a bullet for, but my current client isn't one of them." He loomed over the hapless reporter, who leaned back. "I have another solution?"

Toby closed his eyes, waiting for the electric shock to hit him. The one time I'm right about something, it has to be tonight. What good would it do him if he was dead?

"Oh, marbles!"

A volt and a flash and a scream. The footlights in the museum dimmed, then went out.