Chapter Three: Society
Pacifica wandered the corridors of the underground base, golf club in hand.
In one room she found hooded robes hanging up on hooks. She took one down and looked it over. It had a crossed-out eye on the top of the hood. Did these belong to the Bill worshipers?
"These might be useful as clothes," she thought. "And I could make a pile of them to sleep on tonight."
Pacifica took one and put it on; it was a little chilly down here. She left the hood down.
She noticed a room with tubes leading into it, the kind that tellers use at bank drive-up windows. Inside was a large grim-faced statue, and the floor was littered with tubes, all with names of people in town.
On one side sat a television-like device, and one of the tubes was in it. Pacifica found the play button.
"My name is Fiddleford Hadron McGucket, and I wish to unsee what I have seen."
The tape recorded McGucket's downfall from a brilliant researcher to the local kook he was today. It explained the origin of the group with the crossed-out eye. McGucket had founded it after inventing a device to erase memories.
Pacifica didn't think it had much to do with their current situation until the end, when the insane McGucket babbled something and put his fingers around his eye in a triangle shape. That made her jump.
"This does have to do with Bill! I'll have to watch everything and see what else there is," Pacifica thought.
Pacifica looked over the tubes on the floor, and her own name jumped out at her. She put her tube into the player.
The tape showed her fastened into the chair, struggling to get out.
"Pacifica Northwest, what did you see?" asked a man off-screen with a British accent.
"Crazy little golf-ball people at the mini-golf park tried to kill me," her recording said. "I got away, just barely. I'm going to sue that place, and own them."
The tape showed her being blasted by a glowing ray from a gun.
"Pacifica Northwest, what do you know of golf-ball people?"
"I don't know what you're talking about. I just want to go home," Pacifica said in a confused voice.
"It is unseen!" chanted the group of robed figures in unison.
So that was how it worked. Pacifica remembered the grudge match with Mabel at Ye Royal Discount Putt Hutt. Mabel had been doing well, outscoring her on several holes in a row. Something happened that was hazy in her memory. In the end, Mabel admitted to cheating and gave her a sticker and an apology. (Pacifica took the sticker off so her parents wouldn't see it, but she still had it in her room.) They had given her a ride home and a taco to eat in the car.
It seemed that she and Mabel had settled things between them and were on the way to being friends. Dipper not so much, right then, but things had warmed up between them on the night of the party and the ghost. Now she saw that the two situations had much in common. In both cases she bonded with someone after they had to fight together for their lives.
Pacifica sighed. She missed Mabel and Dipper, and wondered how they were getting on in the apocalypse. She was lonely; her dad was more responsibility than company. The videos of lost memories would give her something to do, at least.
Days passed, keeping her father and herself alive and watching the many tapes. Most were useless, random encounters with gnomes, manotaurs, and lake monsters. Pacifica had discovered her father's tape, but she noticed that another space on the same row had a pressure switch. She didn't want to set off an alarm and attract anyone into their one safe haven, so she left it alone for the time being.
Then one day she saw another person in a robe, slipping across a corridor in front of her.
Pacifica called out, "You! Come back here!"
She gave chase, her golf club ready. It was just one person, on the small side, and she thought she could handle them. She ran after them and soon cornered them in the Hall of the Forgotten (she had learned from the tapes what the room was called).
"Please don't hurt me," said the person.
"Who are you?" Pacifica demanded.
The person lowered their hood. It was a woman with short brown hair.
"Agatha Doakes, member of the Society of the Blind Eye. Who are you?"
"Pacifica. Does your group worship that monster who took over?"
"No, the opposite. We're opposed to all sorts of weirdness. When we had our memory gun we helped people to forget things like that. Now there's so much weirdness going on constantly we could never catch up, even if we got our gun again," said Agatha.
"I've seen tapes of how you 'helped' people, including me. It wasn't very nice... but the enemy of my enemy is my friend. If you're against Bill, maybe we can join forces. We need to stop the weirdness at the source, and worry about clean-up later. Are there more of you?" asked Pacifica.
"No. Everyone else had their memory erased. I've been going all over town spray-painting our Blind Eye logo on things, hoping to stir up their memories and to get some of them back, but so far it hasn't worked," said Agatha.
"What happened to everyone?" asked Pacifica.
"People came down here a while ago and learned our secrets. They wanted to stop us, so they tied us up to a pillar and used our own gun on us. I'm a bit of an escape artist. I was on the far side of the pillar and I slipped out of the ropes and hid to the side. After they used the gun I moved back into place and pretended I was affected, too. I walked out with the others," said Agatha.
"Agatha, I'm not normally a trusting person, but I'm desperate. I'll join forces with you, even join your society, if you'll help me gather information to use against the demon."
"All right, Pacifica. I'll make you an honorary member. Do you have any idea what to do?"
"One thing, at least. Help me get the records on the shelf behind the statue, without setting off an alarm," said Pacifica.
"What is once forgotten should stay forgotten," said Agatha.
"We need any scraps of information we can get. Your founder, McGucket, knew something about Bill. He may even have worked on an invention that helped bring Bill here. There could be more, and it looks like those alarmed memories are the most important ones," said Pacifica.
"Our founder was Old Man McGucket? That's hard to believe."
"You've forgotten who your founder was?"
"Yes, we used the device on ourselves quite a bit, maybe too much, now that I think about it."
"So, will you help me? Do you know how to turn off the alarm, if there is one?"
"Yes, there's a hidden switch behind the base of the statue."
They turned off the alarm and Pacifica reached up to the shelf.
"Now for the memories of Preston Northwest," said Pacifica.
