It happened in the gap between OREGON THANKS YOU COME BACK SOON and WELCOME TO CALIFORNIA. On the south-bund Interstate there actually is a space of a good many yards between the two signs, as though, southbound on a bus, for those few seconds you really aren't anywhere.

So it was probably appropriate that Dipper Pines woke up from a doze to become aware that the bus had stopped moving. It wasn't supposed to do that until it came to, well, a stop—a place for passengers to board or get off. It would come to about sixteen more during the long trip south to Piedmont—which is why a six-hour car drive worked out to eighteen hours on the bus.

The air smelled like tin and lightning, a strange other-worldly odor, and on Dipper's tongue it tasted like burnt wombat grease. The sunshine slanting in from the windshield had a strange texture, too, as if it had suddenly solidified into a yellow slant of delicate and hot ice.

And—why was the bus completely stopped on Interstate 5? Why was the logging truck beside the bus also stopped—and why was its red tarp, loose at one corner, frozen in mid-flap? Speaking of flap, why was a bird hanging in mid-air off over the shoulder of the highway, as if it had been nailed there? Nailed with the peculiar sort of nail you might only find at a hardware store you visited in a nightmare, the kind of place where the clerk says, "I know just what you need to stop your toilet from flooding your whole house. Got none in stock, but I'll order it and you can pick it up—" here he grins—"sometime next year." That kind of nail.

Ahead of Dipper, the driver seemed statue-still, too, and Waddles was caught in the act of jumping down off the front seat, a pink arc of pig stuck in mid-air as though screwed there with the kind of screw you could only find next aisle over from nightmare nails.

But beside Dipper, his twin Mabel snoozed normally, her head down, her mouth open, drooling a little and making her usual "um nom nom" murmur as she leaned against his shoulder.

"Time has stopped. And I did it," came an apologetic and somehow familiar voice from behind him.

Dipper yipped and leaped up, and Mabel, who had put most of her weight on him, fell over and immediately complained, "Dipper!"

"It's you!" Dipper said, too loud, staring at the roly-poly figure with its center-parted brown hair above thick goggles, the round face distressed, the round body dressed in blue-gray jacket and trousers, and the roundish feet in white boots.

Mabel had pulled up on her knees on the seat, facing backward. "Blendin Blandin! Your hair looks great." She gave him a braces-twinkling smile and a thumbs up.

"Thanks. Listen," Blandin pleaded in his whiny voice, "Kids, I need your help."

Mabel seemed to notice how still everything was—and then she saw her pig. "What did you do to Waddles?" she wailed.

"He's all right," Blandin assured her. "Time has just temporarily stopped—that sounds wrong. Let's say I've suspended the forward motion of time for everything else in the world, and we're in a temporal pocket. Because I need help!"

Dipper looked back at empty seats behind Blandin. Odd, but he, Mabel, and the pig were still the only passengers—well, aside from Blandin, who had probably just popped into existence without pausing to buy a ticket. Dipper asked, "What do you mean, you need help? Help for what?"

The round little man was sweating. "Oh man, oh man, oh man, it's all my fault. Kids, the time continuum is gonna blow! And nobody will help me find a way to fix it! He killed the Time Baby!"

"Huh?" Mabel asked. "Who did? The Time Baby's Death shall be avenged!" She thrust a fist in the air.

"Mabel," Dipper said. "Mr. Blandin, you'd better explain."

"All right, I—" he broke off and smiled like a cherub. "Oh. You—you called me Mister Blandin!"

"Well, yeah, 'cause that's, like your name, you know?"

"But nobody ever calls me—no, no, I have to concentrate. Listen. Bill Cipher killed the Time Baby and almost all of the TPAES." He coughed. "It—it doesn't spell out anything. It's short for the Time Paradox Avoidance Enforcement Squadron." He looked suddenly very frazzled and sounded very frantic: "There's only four of us Squadders left alive—"

Mabel laughed. "Squadders? Doy!"

"That's what we call ourselves. Only four of us left, and the other three are too scared to do anything!"

"But our Grunkle Stan destroyed Bill Cipher," Mabel said. "And all the stuff he did to Gravity Falls sort of undid itself. So why didn't—"

Blandin was shaking his head. "The Time Baby is different. He didn't belong in this continuum, so when Bill erased him, it was sorta permanent. But without the Time Baby and the TPAES, all these paradoxes are starting to pop up in history. The Wrong Brothers didn't invent the airplane already!"

"The Wrong Brothers?" asked Dipper, puzzled.

"I know, right?" said Blandin. "Somehow we have to figure out how to get the Time Baby back on the job. I mean, sure, he's cranky and grumpy, and you really don't want to get busted to the Changing Platoon, but he did keep time running." He paused for a few panicky breaths before adding, "Look, I'd better get you two somewhen so we can talk—if you'll help me!"

"Of course we'll help you!" Mabel shouted. "Mystery Twins!"

Dipper gave her a reluctant fist bump, though his heart wasn't in it. "I thought all the trouble was over," he muttered. "Mystery Twins. Yeah. Yay us."

"I won't leave Waddles," warned Mabel.

"He'll actually be safer here," Blandin said. "No time will pass. If we succeed, I'll reinsert you two back in this very same moment, and he'll be fine. If not—well, whatever happens here, if we perish and time starts again, he'll probably live out a normal pig life before everything collapses into complete chaos and madness."

"That's all right, then," Mabel said cheerfully. "Let's go!"

Poof! Dipper remembered that sound. It was the noise you make when you jump through time. It's a little like a duck sneezing, but not much.

"This is where you live?" Dipper asked, looking around the metal-walled room.

"Well, yeah," Blandin said. "I know it's not much, but I'm not a senior officer yet. They also get a bathroom."

The place looked . . . futuristic, yet vaguely pathetic, like a future room dreamed up by H.G. Wells while suffering a hangover: Walls of brushed silver, a narrow cot of a bed built against one wall so it seemed to float in air, a lonely table just large enough for one, one chair at the table, some . . . things that were probably the equivalent of a mini-fridge, a hotplate, and a microwave, and—that was about it, really. One door, no window.

Blandin hauled the single chair over for himself and said, "You two can sit on the bed."

Mabel tested it by bouncing. And, getting good results, she didn't stop. Dipper sat on the foot of the mattress, swaying every time Mabel came down with a boing. "Okay, so what have you tried?"

"Uh . . . I talked to the other three survivors."

"And what did they decide to do?"

"They're going back in time seven billion years and finding a habitable planet, 'cause they figure that's too early for the paradox to mess it up much."

"Cowards!" Mabel said. "Boingy-boingy-boingy!"

"Okay," Dipper said. "How's this? You simply go back in time to just before the Time Baby tried to stop Bill and warn him what's going to happen."

Anguish twisted Blandin's mouth into an upside-down U. With teeth. "But I saw the Time Baby and all my colleagues disintegrated. If there's a witness who can't forget—and I can't—then that scene can never be undone. It would be a terrible paradox. The Time Baby will insist on sacrificing himself, because he won't violate the time stream for any reason."

"What a big baby!" Mabel said, finally coming to rest.

"Yeah, he's pretty big," Blandin agreed.

"Wait, let me think, let me think," Dipper said. Then he murmured, "It might work, if we can find the right equipment. Okay, could we go with you into the past to see the Time Baby?"

"That's what I hoped you'd do," Blandin admitted. "I'm scared of him."

And so it happened that, between nap time and diaper change, they popped in on the Time Baby, who was lying on his back sucking his pudgy toes. "Blndn," he said in his magisterial voice, "wht brns uh hr?"

"Take that foot out of your mouth, you big baby," Mabel said, though in the kind of voice people use to tease infants in a kind way.

The Time Baby did release his toes, but he swelled and turned pink with rage. "Mortal girl!" he roared. "Prepare for the wrath of—what are you doing?"

Mabel had clambered up onto the Time Baby's round belly. "Ooh, so squishy-wishy! Whose da cutie, den?" she asked. "Whose da best widdle Time Baby in da whole continuum?"

"Mabel!" Dipper moaned.

"Relax, bro," she said. "I know what I'm doing." Then she leaned down, planted her lips on the enormous tummy, and blew a loud raspberry on the Time Baby's belly.

"Oh, my," the time-juggling infant murmured. Then he—giggled. True, he sounded rather like an Archbishop of Canterbury who had accidentally inhaled nitrous oxide in the midst of a funeral service, but he giggled.

"Want another?" cooed Mabel. "Does baby want another one, hmm?"

"It is a peculiar sensation, but not unpleasant," the Time Baby granted. "Um. Yes, you may give me another."

"Only if you promise to listen to us," Mabel said.

"Mortal, I—well, I—Oh, do it again!"

Four raspberries later, Blandin at last got a chance to have his say: "Sir, in just over fifteen minutes, after the ceremonial Changing of the Diaper, I'm going to burst through that door over there and tell you that on twenty-first century Earth, Bill Cipher has escaped from his own dimension and is threatening to rip open the veil between reality and the Mindscape. You will decide to lead as many of the TPAES to deal with him as are available—but he's too strong already, and he will erase you from existence!"

Gravely, the Time Baby said, "Then Bill Cipher has conquered the Multiverse?"

"No, he didn't!" Dipper exclaimed. "Our grand-uncles outsmarted and destroyed him."

"That is a relief, at least. Even if I am fated to non-existence, that is some comfort."

Mabel said, "Nuh-uh, 'cause without you the past is unraveling like the first sweater I tried to knit! It's all going to collapse into a big bowl of spoiled clam-chowder chaos!"

"There is that," the Time Baby admitted. "Yes, gazing into futurity I see the danger and the inevitable dissolution of reality. But Bill Cipher will have has killed me? Are you certain of this?" asked the Time Baby.

Blandin sounded panicky: "I have already will have had seen it happen!"

"Hm. Unfortunate that you escaped alive. Had you died too, we might have had a chance. But what will is to have happened now must be what has to be that is which will have happened."

"Not necessarily," Dipper said. "But—wait, what? No, no time, never mind explaining. Listen, I think I might know a way out, but you've got to do some quick planning."

And so it was that on this second occasion when the Time Baby and his troops went to twenty-first century Earth to confront the unexpectedly powerful Bill Cipher, they popped into existence not inside the weirdness containment bubble around Gravity Falls, but just outside it. "You mortals set up the machinery," the Time Baby ordered.

Dipper and Mabel scuttled, hurrying to assemble the pieces of the Altairian Tri-D Imagifier—something some aliens wouldn't invent for another million years, but what's that to time travelers? Mabel read the directions, fortunately available in an English version as well as seven thousand alien languages and Chinese, as Dipper put the pieces together. She finished up, "Now that assembly joyful of your most great device is complete and happy, don't bring back boring nasty no-good photos of your so nice vacation. Bring back the whole scene and once more with feelings re-live it again!"

"Ready?" Dipper asked, ignoring the sales pitch.

"In a moment," said the Time Baby. "Coordinates, Blandin?"

Blandin had been working with a calculator, his fingers tap-dancing on the keys like Fred Astaire in bad need of a potty break. He read off the numbers and Dipper fed them into the projector. "Give us the signal, mortal boy," the Time Baby said to Dipper.

"In five," Dipper said. "Four." He raised his fingers, silently counted off three, two, and one, and pointed.

From where they were, safely outside the weirdness barrier, the Time Baby and all his soldiers challenged Bill Cipher and ordered him back to his own dimension. And just as Blandin had described, Bill immediately pointed a stick-figure finger and—disintegrated them.

Or, more accurately, he disintegrated the holographic projection they had created.

But to all appearances, history had been preserved.

"Let's get out of here," the Time Baby said, and they vanished from there . . .

—somewhere a somewhat mutant duck sneezed apologetically—

. . . and appeared instantly in the strange citadel beyond time, space, and busy railroad tracks, from which the Time Baby kept an eye on all the history and future of the universe.

Yet the Time Baby looked worried. "We have survived, but I wonder. Are you sure your uncles—"

"Grunkles," corrected Mabel.

"Yes, whatever, will still have been able to is to have will destroy Bill?"

"I'm almost a hundred per cent sure," Dipper said, hoping he had understood but suspecting he hadn't.

"Let me check." The enormous baby closed his eyes and meditated. Then he opened them and actually smiled. "The time paradoxes have not developed, except for some Wrights being in the right place and the Wrongs deciding to vacation at Yosemite instead of Kill Devil Hills. That's minor enough, I suppose. Your—um—grunkles have are to will be have succeeded."

"There's something really blarrrg about your verb tenses," Mabel told him.

The Time Baby shrugged. "It happens when you exist beyond time. Blandin, you may return these two—"

"Sir!" Blandin said in a yelp.

The huge baby face scowled down. "What is it? I want my bottle, and you know how cranky I get!"

The round little man swallowed hard with an audible gulp. "Sir, we owe Mabel and Dipper Pines something. This is even more important than winning a stupid game, and when they did that, you remember how generous they were."

"Stupid game?" The voice raged, but then calmed immediately. "Hm. I suppose it is rather stupid, at that. Yes, I remember very well. You got pretty hair from that deal."

"Aw," Mabel said, nudging Blendin. "See? He thinks it's pretty. You have to find yourself a lady."

"Very well," the Time Baby pronounced in a bored sort of voice. "Each mortal child may have a free time wish. Now—"

Mabel cut him off: "Just a sec, babes. You owe Blendin something, too. He was scared to death, but he still made himself brave enough to find a way to save your life."

"Would you interfere with my running my own organization?" bellowed the Time Baby.

Dipper and Mabel looked at each other. Then, together, they said, "Yes we would!"

Mabel added in a sly, sing-song way, "And if you do something nice for him, I'll give you a farewell tummy buzz."

And that is how Blendin Blandin received his promotion to Senior Time Patrolman, enjoyed a memorable date with Cleopatra (who adored running her fingers through his hair), and was personally permitted to carry out the time wishes of Dipper and Mabel.

Dipper? Though Bill Cipher had incinerated the three Journals, he wanted them back. He and Blendin successfully snuck them out of Ford's workshop one night between Ford's return and Weirdmageddon, and then Blendin found some friendly alien owners of a quick-print shop a few light-years from Earth that was advanced enough to duplicate exactly all three volumes. They returned the originals, still fated to the fire, but now Dipper had two copies of each book, one set for himself and one for Stanford the next time the two met.

Mabel refused to tell Dipper what her wish was.

After what to them had seemed like a couple of days, Dipper and Mabel flashed back into existence aboard the bus, it began to move again, Waddles landed with a grunt and came back to scramble up onto the seat between the two Pines twins—forcing Dipper nearly off the edge—and life resumed.

After they got home, Dipper asked several times, "What did you wish for?" He still received no answer.

However, when school began that fall Mabel suddenly became the best-liked girl in their class, and she had her pick of any guy for the school dances. And a couple of days after the back-to-school dance, which Dipper attended, though he stood against the wall sighing and didn't once dance with anyone, he received a postcard in the mail:

"Dude, I am missing you so crazy much. Soos says you two can have your old room back any time you visit. Promise me you'll come back in June." And it was signed "Luv ya lotz, Wendy."

And then he guessed. Mabel had been generous with her wish.

As Dipper thumb-tacked the postcard to his bedroom wall, where he could see it each night before falling asleep, he thought, Thank you, Mabel. Maybe next summer, maybe later, but one of these days there will be a time to dance, and someone to dance with. Thank you, Sis.