Dimension 0
Gravity Falls, OR
February 22, 1982
"Stan! Stanley! Help me!"
Terror. Terror so thick he can't think.
The portal roars behind him, perverting gravity, twisting spacetime, opening the door to horrors beyond human comprehension.
"Stanley! Do something! STANLEY!"
He doesn't know what he expects Stan to do. It's already too late, but desperation argues that there must be something that can be done.
Then he remembers.
'The first journal! I still have it!'
And it changes his priorities.
'I can't let it be lost with me! It's too important!'
Ford flings the precious book as far away as he can. Maybe it will be enough. Maybe it can still be used to fix some of his mistakes.
Light engulfs him.
Dimension 1
Somewhere and Nowhere
Time is an Illusion
He looks but the image before his eyes twists and writhes in impossible ways. He tries to listen but his ears can hear nothing over the laughter in his head and the screaming in his heart. He wants to move but he can't. There's something latching onto his legs, holding him down, or maybe there's nothing at all and he's just forgotten how to move them. He can no longer be certain. Common and physical senses are all suddenly unreliable. Or perhaps they have always been? He does not know.
There is still something. Something that he needs to do. It is important. Terribly so. But he can't think! What is it? What is it? What? What? WHA-
Glasses.
The thought drifts beneath the frenzied panic for a moment before it rises above the mad laughter and he remembers. His final gambit. It will not save him now - not now, should have thought sooner - but it may still be able to save his dimension.
Ford fumbles, normally nimble fingers made clumsy - or maybe it is his mind that has become clumsy - by the way reality is folding in on itself, but he manages to grab hold of his glasses in both hands. His body betrays him and finds the little buttons hidden in the metal frame too soon. He isn't ready, but that changes nothing.
He focuses on the light he fell through. The portal is a bright, shining beacon in this otherwise senseless plane. It promises salvation from the surrounding insanity already digging its claws into his fragile human mind. It is a beautiful lie. It needs to be destroyed. There is no other recourse left.
Ford fights to concentrate through the confusion pressing in on him. He pulls his arm back, throws his glasses at the vortex, and hopes that his aim will be true.
For a moment, nothing seems to happen and there is fear, panic, too late, not enough, usele-
The moment passes.
The portal begins to expand violently only to immediate implode instead, winking out of being entirely.
The laughter in his head changes to enraged screeching. It is not just him to whom the portal promised salvation. His heart begins to sing in triumph even as his body shivers in fear. Even though he is lost, he has still won. His home remains out of the demon's reach.
With the distraction of his task now spent, it isn't long before the madness begins to affect him even more strongly than before. Worse, he can feel his sanity being torn from him. Rational thought is soon beyond him as the Between of Dimensions takes him for one of its own.
He's afraid and ecstatic. This is everything he's worked for and against. All the worlds are in front of him and yet lost to him. He knows everything in this moment but it's too much, Too Much, TOO MUCH! - and so he is blinded with the knowledge until he knows nothing at all.
This plane of existence - It does not exist! It is neither possible nor real! It is absence! It is the Between! - will destroy him. No human should be here. His mind is breaking, fragmenting under the strain. He is lost. He is damned. He is nothing.
Light engulfs him.
Dimension 2
Gravity Falls, OR
April 17, 1989
"Stanford? ... No. No, you're not him. You're not my brother. You're some other Stan's twin, aren't you?"
Read the entire Dimension 0/297 series on Archive of Our Own: archiveofourown dot org slash series slash 457846
Read the entire Travels and Journals series on Archive of Our Own: archiveofourown dot org slash series slash 543127