"Ferb? Are you still awake?"
Ferb turned underneath his purple covers to better see his brother in the opposite bed. Sure enough, his eyes did not show a bit of tiredness.
"Good," Phineas replied. "I can't sleep either."
He turned and looked up at the ceiling for a while. He let out a long sigh, before turning his head again to his brother. "What's a future like where you've forgotten everything we've done together?"
Phineas tried to hide glossy eyes as he turned away. "You forget me?"
"Phineas..." Ferb consoled as he lifted the covers off of himself. He dropped to the floor and made his way over to the second bed. Phineas, too, pulled off his covers and dangled his feet over the side as Ferb came and sat beside him.
"I'll never forget you. You know that."
Phineas looked up from his feet. "Thanks," he said, giving Ferb a small smile.
The two teenagers leapt down the steps, skipping multiple ones at a time.
"Today's the day, Ferb! I can FEEL it!" Phineas celebrated as he led the way. "It's gonna work today, I know it!"
"You've been saying that every day this week, Phin," Ferb replied as they both reached the bottom.
"Yeah I know, but we just got the last parts for the photon coils last night, and they are sitting in the garage RIGHT NOW."
Though Phineas and Ferb's projects normally took only a day, even when they were older, this week they had been working on something very special. After much theorization and planning, the pair of inventors had finally built a functional prototype time machine.
Now this machine was unlike anything anyone had ever built, and was based around a quantum theory that Phineas and Ferb had formulated themselves. This theory surpassed even the ideas of Xavier Onassis, and if it worked, could provide timeloop-free travel.
Just yesterday they had perfected short-distance travel, and had blueprints for a long-distance add-on that included a photon coil, which they planned on building today.
Ferb dug his hands through the cardboard box and pulled out a copper wire. "Check."
"Bronze cylinder tubing?" Phineas read.
"Umm, check," Ferb answered as he found the said object.
Isabella, Baljeet, and Buford stood around them in the garage as they watched Phineas and Ferb begin to build the last piece of the machine.
"So what exactly is it supposed to do?" Baljeet asked as he watched Phineas wrap the wire around the tubing.
"The photon coils will allow the machine to travel longer distances, once we attach them," he answered, securing a second coil onto a metal-and-wood platform.
Ferb had out his laptop and was currently typing something in. "But first we have to see if they work," he added.
The finished box had two photon coils towering out of it, which made it look as though it had smokestacks. Phineas reached to its base and pushed a toggle switch.
The coils hummed with life as small bits of electricity began to hop between the threaded copper windings.
"Okay, let's attach it." Phineas said as he lifted his fingers underneath the box, but he hesitated for a second. "Wow, this is heavier that I expected," he commented.
Ferb lowered the lid of his laptop but did not latch it, and set it aside as he leaned forward. "Phin, be careful."
"Yeah..." Phineas started as he walked slowly towards the machine in the corner of the garage.
But then, as he tried to step over a cable, his fingers slipped. The box fell out of his hands, and the charged metal of the coils came into contact with the skin of his arm.
A blinding white light overtook the garage, and Ferb pulled his arms over his face. Baljeet, Buford, and Isabella dropped to their knees as they, too, shielded themselves.
When the silence had settled, Ferb peeked out from between his arms. All he could do was stare at the box sitting on the floor. Phineas was gone.
"Phineas!" he and Isabella both shrieked in unison. Isabella ran over to the spot Phineas had been standing and Ferb immediately grabbed for his laptop.
"No..." he mumbled as he began to frantically open files. "No, no, no, no, no... Please tell me that didn't just happen…."
"What happened? Ferb, what happened to Phineas?" Isabella pushed.
Ferb did not respond, concentrating on moving his fingers over the touchpad. He did not lift his eyes when he did speak. " Time... deleted him."
"DELETED!" Isabella screamed.
Baljeet reacted with shock as well. "Ferb, that thing killed Phineas!"
"No..." Ferb responded as he pushed his laptop away and reached beneath he table. He did not seem to be paying attention to the thoughts of his friends; he was far too distracted by the thing he was looking for. He did, however, continue to explain. "Time destabilized around him... and caused it to delete him."
Ferb had grabbed a plastic case, set it on the table, and unlocked its latches. The case contained a series of clear tubes, capped on either end by a triangular chrome piece, and shimmering with a green liquid inside.
"What are THOSE?" Buford asked as everyone examined the object in Ferb's hands.
"Restabilization Cores," he illustrated as he spun the cylinder up to his eyes. "Phineas and I sort of... accidentally discovered the substance while testing one of our many theories. But we kept a couple just in case something bad happened-"
"Then what are you waiting for?" Buford pointed out impatiently. "Turn one on and bring Phineas back."
"It doesn't work like that, Buford," Ferb clarified as he breathed out slowly. Grabbing his school bag that was propped up against the table leg, he dumped it upside down. There was a loud thump as his textbooks and pencils fell out onto the floor.
"According to Phineas' and my theory, time is like a web," he said as he gently yet quickly placed the cores into the bag. "If you restabilize one point, it will just fall apart again. You instead have to restabilize the points connected to it."
The three teenagers merely looked at Ferb in confusion as he returned to his laptop. When it was clear that he was not going to elaborate, they all moved around him to see what he was doing on the computer's screen.
Ferb had opened the software that he and Phineas had programmed themselves. He held his cursor over the text fields.
"Let's see, today's June 23, 2014..." he said as he typed into the boxes. "And the machine overloaded at..." he leaned out of his chair and squinted at the clock on the machine. "...10:03am..."
He finished the last box and pressed enter on his keyboard. The program pulled up a map and tossed six pins onto the satellite photo of a building.
"Looks like they are all in the Googolplex Mall."
"Umm... why are they in there?" Baljeet asked, confused.
"Probably because there are so many people there, there's a lot of energy," Ferb guessed, pushing his fingers through his hair in frustration. "Plus the multiple levels gives the time points variation. All right, let me check the dates."
Ferb had swapped to a different page of the program, and re-entered the information. This time, it produced a set of text.
He read it aloud. "October 10, 11, and 12, 2008."
"Wait... so the points connected to today are in the Googolplex Mall... in... 2008?" Buford summarized with astonishment.
"Yep," Ferb said, standing up to slide his bookbag over his shoulder. He reached over and unplugged his watch from the USB cable attached to his computer, and wrapped the strap around his wrist. "The six points in time occur at exact moments throughout those three days, but I won't know exactly what minute or what room they are in until about five minutes beforehand. That's what my watch is f-"
"Ferb, you are not seriously considering USING that thing after what it did to Phineas, are you?" Isabella demanded, interrupting him.
"If I want to see my brother again, then yes," Ferb stated directly. "Besides, we already know that it works for short-distance."
"But Ferb, is six years really 'short-distance'?" Baljeet brought up, thinking it through in his head. "You know, did you ever really establish what 'short-distance' actually is?"
"I'm not sure. I mean… time is really big," Ferb replied as he stepped onto the circular, blue-lighted platform. "But I have to go, now. If I wait any longer I'll lose the linked window."
"Wait, hold up!" Buford said skeptically. "I've seen the movies. If people from the past see you won't time, like, explode?"
"I have no time to think about paradoxes right now, Buford!" Ferb said, annoyed. He had already pulled the lever that started to make the machine's lights flicker. "And it won't be a problem if I just avoid them."
Isabella stood far away from the whirring machine, but voiced her concern softly. "…what if you can't?"
Ferb placed both feet in the exact center of the platform. "Then I'll tell them I don't know them. Baljeet, hit the switch."