Note: the Wendip Week stories I'm writing are NOT in my usual GF continuity.

World Enough and Time (Wendip Week: Time Travel)

(June 2042)

I have become my Grunkle Stan. Mason Pines sat in what had once been the Mystery Shack, years ago. Now it was his home.

Soos Alvarez had prospered, and now the Mystery Mansion was a major tourist attraction. Soos and Melody also had seven kids, the youngest twelve, the oldest—my God!—nearly thirty. First Stan, and then Ford, had joined Fiddleford McGucket in the Gravity Falls Memorial Park. Mason still visited them every Sunday.

Sometimes, rarely, Mabel came to see him. They both would be 43 this coming August 31. Mabel was the only one who still called him Dipper. She seldom had time, though, because she was on her third husband and her twins, now in their late teens, were, frankly, hellions. She didn't look happy, and she hated to see him as he was, and that made things worse.

If only . . ..

Mason sighed and ran the calculations through his comptek again. It all checked out, at least theoretically. Damn it, if he could only contact Blendin Blandin this would be so much easier! But since Blendin had finally been promoted to Colonel, he never got in touch. Mason hadn't heard from him in sixteen years.

Which was a pity, because fifteen years ago, Wendy Corduroy had died in a stupid, stupid accident that he would have changed in an instant if he could have done it. All he needed was a time tape measure.

It didn't matter that he'd never got up the guts to propose to Wendy, or that she'd married someone else. It didn't matter that Pacifica, after her first divorce, had hinted that she was still interested. He hadn't been. Nothing mattered.

From Fiddleford and from Ford, Mason had inherited a fortune. He used what he needed. The rest just . . . kept growing. His accountant kept badgering him to invest in tax shelters. What was the point? Without her, there was no point.

He ran the simulation, and it appeared to work. There were limitations. He couldn't use the device the way he'd used the, uh, borrowed time tape measure. It took a hell of a lot of power, and oddly, the range was exactly 29 years. He could go back to June 2013. No farther back, no place in between.

And the physical effects—

The mental effects.

The power demands that would mean a very short window—

So many questions.

There was no way to test it except to do it.

Mason powered up his exoskeleton. Once he would have been confined to a wheelchair—indeed, he had been for fourteen years, ever since that final, shattering conflict with Bill Cipher the second—and God willing, the last—time that the insane pyramid had tried and failed to conquer Earth. The experience had left Mason with a broken back.

But except for the faint hissing of the mechanics, the exoskeleton allowed him to walk very nearly normally. He wondered if his predicted "consonant effects" as he called them would truly work. If not—well, if not, too bad. He'd be a paraplegic with no hope of remedy in 2013. But if he could change the course of Wendy's life, save her from that dreadful marriage, from that insane husband who drove them both off a cliff—

"Worth it," he muttered.

The exo had a tough time on the stairs down to the lab level, but he'd gotten used to that and took them easily, one at a time.

Ford's old lab had a sleeker look now, the whole place smart. Holodisplays had replaced monitors. The tech was all built into the walls, called when he needed it.

Mason reached the pad, a round base the color of moonlight. He stood on it. "Power up," he said.

"Yes, Dr. Pines. Full power in five seconds. Four. Three. Two. One. Full power is available."

"On my signal, activate the grid."

"Clarification, please. This is a test run?"

"No. This is my first attempt at time travel."

"The dangers are very high."

"Acknowledged."

"You realize you will necessarily be located spatially as well as temporally."

"I do."

"Very well. Awaiting the command."

Mason took a deep, deep breath. "Activate."

When are we? During the seconds of quasi-existence, as a disembodied intelligence, Mason recalled Mabel asking that. Not where, but when. Now, though, it was where and when, simultaneously. If he had only remembered right—if he hadn't slipped up in the maths—the gray fog of nothingness began to tinge with color.

He tingled. He felt strange. He moved his legs—his legs! He wore shorts, sneakers, a red tee shirt, a blue vest, and a—oh, God, yes, a fur trapper's hat.

"Dipper," Mabel said, "stop squirming!"

"Mabel!" He hugged his sister.

"Too soon for sibling hugs!" she complained. "At least wait until we get off the bus and have some kind of adventure first!"

The bus driver hit the brakes, he looked out the window, and felt like shouting for joy. There was the old bus stop—long gone, long gone, but it was here, it was now!

He grabbed his duffel and ran to leap off the bus.

And there she stood, grinning.

"Wendy!"

"Hiya, dorks!" she said, laughing. "Hey, you're growin' up on me! Whoa, Dipper!"

"Wendy," Dipper said as she took the trapper hat off his head and replaced it with his old pine-tree trucker's cap, "listen. I know we said we'd be friends. I thought I'd be OK with that. But listen: I'm in love with you. You don't feel that way about me, it's cool, I don't mind! Only—let me be in love with you, because I can't turn off my feelings just like that. I won't keep after you or bug you after today, but—just let me love you, even at a distance."

"Dude!" she said.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Mabel said. "This is some serious biz, Brobro!"

"I promise," Dipper said, "if you won't push me away, I won't be a bother. And I'll—I'll strive to be someone worthy of being loved."

Wendy looked down for a minute. Then she looked up and smiled. "You know what, man? It has been such a shitty year! So, yeah. I'm fond of you, too. Sure, Dip. Let's just take it easy and see what happens. Deal?"

"Deal," Dipper said.

In his head, he heard the comptek's inhuman voice: Effect termination will occur in fifteen seconds.

Fifteen seconds. And then, if he'd changed the course of his and Wendy's lives—

The Dr. Mason Pines he had been would cease to exist. The thirteen-year-old Dipper would have a memory of impulsively opening his heart to Wendy—and of her smiling at him with a new light in her eyes—and maybe this time around there would be world enough and time.

The presence that was the forty-two-year-old Dr. Mason Pine felt himself dissolving into nothing. But at the last moment, he whispered, "Worth it."

The End