Chapter Four: Perpetual Motion and Emotion
It was about three in the morning on the night before West Coast Tech was due to arrive to check out Ford's perpetual motion machine at the science fair. Stanley had come home late after visiting the school, but now everyone was asleep.
Bill visited Ford's sleeping mind.
"Guess what, Sixer? Time is circular. The Big Bang is followed by the Big Crunch, which reverses time. I'm an immortal energy being from a parallel universe, and I've sensed that happening in this dimension over a thousand times."
"Interesting," Ford responded in his dream.
"Your future self made a deal with me, from that moment until the end of time. But since the end of time is the same as the beginning of time, the deal applies now, too."
Bill gently separated Ford's spirit from his body and moved in. He got Ford dressed and took a bus over to the high school.
At the school, "Bord" carefully lifted one corner of the tarp, just enough to get access to the panel that Stanley had loosened earlier when he hit the table. He did enough damage to make sure the machine would fail the next day.
He took Ford back home and put him back to bed. Bill could eat childhood memories, and Ford was still young enough that he could erase the memory of the whole possession. While Bill was at it, he also ate many of Ford's good memories with Stanley, so that Ford would remember the relationship as smothering rather than happy.
In the morning, the demonstration was a failure and Stanley got the blame for trying to hold Ford back. Their father kicked Stanley out of the house until he made a fortune, and Ford did nothing to prevent it.
Other top colleges got word of the failed project, and Stanford ended up having to go to Backupsmore University. He did well, and with his grant money he was able to build a home in Gravity Falls to research the paranormal there.
"I knew he would end up in Gravity Falls," Bill told Tad. "That's time working to keep the Mystery Fair time-loop going."
As before, Ford found the summoning words for Bill. This time, Bill was ready to give him the plans for a Portal.
Ford called on his old college friend, Fiddleford McGucket. They got on well for a while, but soon McGucket became suspicious.
"Where are these ideas coming from? Who are you working with?" McGucket asked.
"Nobody," said Ford. "I meditate and new ideas come to me. Don't be surprised if I act differently sometimes when I'm deep in meditation. It's an altered state of consciousness."
"I don't like it," said McGucket.
"Do you want to make the Portal with me, or not?" asked Ford.
"It's the scientific breakthrough of the century. I can't afford not to be part of it," said McGucket.
Bill regarded the man as a loose end for his plans. McGucket wasn't on the Wheel, so there was no reason not to dispose of him. With a little manipulation of Ford he was able to set up an "accident." It didn't entirely work; Ford was able to pull McGucket back with a rope, but not before his head went into the portal and Bill was able to pour damaging nightmares into his mind.
McGucket quit the project. Ford became suspicious of what was on the other side of the portal that had so affected his friend.
Bill revealed to him in a nightmare a glimpse of his true plans.
Ford shut the device down as far as he could alone. The three-key fail-safe mechanism that Bill had tricked him into installing meant that one man could not shut it down by himself. As it was now, a simple switch on the main control panel would activate it again.
Ford wanted to hire an assistant so that he could shut down the portal. He found a drifter named Ivan Blotts. The man was a bit strange; he has once worked as a demonstration model for a teacher of phrenology (a psuedo-science that tried to read a person's personality from the shape of their skull). His head was covered in tattoos that were supposed to reveal regions of the mind.
"Before you come to work for me, I want to show you a picture from my journal. I need to know if you have ever encountered this being," said Ford.
He showed Blotts a page with a dark image labeled "Bill Cipher." He had written how he used to think of Bill, and crossed it out and wrote in his new understanding: "BILL CAN'T BE TRUSTED!"
"We're very close indeed," said Ivan.
Ford suddenly became aware that Ivan's eyes were yellow and had vertical slits like Bill's.
Ivan reached across the table to grab Ford. Ford struck back with the pen in his hand, poking it into Ivan's right eye. Drops of blood went all over the open page of the book. With a great struggle, Ford was able to overcome the wounded man and force him out of the house.
Ford went back to write in his journal on the blank page facing the one with the drawing of Bill. He sketched Bill entering Ivan's head and wrote a warning: "Beware Bill. The most powerful and dangerous creature I've ever encountered. Whatever you do, never let him into your mind," and "DO NOT SUMMON AT ALL COSTS!"
He added an incantation he had researched from an arcane book that should let a person follow Bill into a sleeping mind to prevent his chaos.
Then he went back to the start of his third journal and wrote in a new reminder, "TRUST NO ONE."
Increasingly paranoid, Ford didn't dare to sleep. He added notes in invisible ink to his journals, thinking that Bill would be unable to read them (he could). He hid two of the journals in secret locations in the woods.
Finally, in desperation, Ford constructed a surgical robot that could install a metal plate in his head to keep Bill out. When he was recovered from the operation he would send for Stanley to take the last journal and hide it in a secure location, so that no one person would know where they all were.
There was one flaw in the procedure that Bill exploited. Ford had to have anesthesia for the operation, and just as he went under Bill implanted a hypnotic suggestion, a choreographed fight scene to carry out when his brother arrived.
It all went as Bill planned, and Ford ended up between dimensions in the Portal. Bill made sure the dimensions he could visit from there would give him adventures to build up his confidence but not kill him. He still needed Sixer alive.
As planned, Stanley took over his brother's role and made the place into a Mystery Shack. The stage was set for a replay of the time-traveler incident, this time without Ford.