Chapter 8
Phineas tried to focus his eyes to the bright air around him. It took him a second to realize that he wasn't wet anymore. The sky was a shiny blue, and white puffy clouds were scattered throughout it.
"Phineas! Phineas!" Isabella's voice called to him, as the backyard became less fuzzy and slid into view. Phineas blinked a few more times, before trying to stand up. He noticed that all of his friends were circled around him, Ferb included.
Smiling at them all, Phineas rubbed his head. He said mumbling, "S-sorry, I must've nodded off there for a second."
All of them took an uneasy glance towards each other, before Baljeet spoke up, "…Nodded off?"
"Yeah…" Phineas answered. "I thought I got enough sleep last night, but maybe I was just really tir—"
But Buford interrupted him. "Hold on, hold on. I don't know where you're going with this, Dinner Bell. But you weren't sleeping."
Phineas stopped talking and listened. "…I wasn't?"
"No," Baljeet confirmed. "Actually, far from it. You were running all around the backyard, telling everybody that you were seventeen."
"I…?" Phineas said with a distant stare over everyone's shoulders. "I was?"
"Yep," Isabella chimed in. "You went to each of us and asked us how old we were. You were super interested by that."
"But… but no. For the last hour or so I was sleeping…" Phineas muttered partway to himself. "I was having a dream."
I can assure you myself. This is real life.
"How could I… how could I have been dreaming without sleeping?"
"Yeah, you were definitely not sleeping," Buford repeated. He moved his arms in demonstration. "For the last hour or so, you've been running around saying 'oohh' and 'aahh' at everything."
"If I wasn't dreaming…" Phineas almost stuttered. "Then… then… then that place is real?"
But Phineas shook his head as more thoughts entered it. "It can't be real… Here is real. This is now, and that place… isn't. How can both places be real?"
A hard crunch was heard as Perry stuck his foot through the front door of Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated. He left a huge hole behind him after he had landed promptly on the polished floor.
"Perry the Platypus!" Doofenshmirtz yelled in reaction, spinning around from his work. He tossed both hands at the door. "I just fixed that from last week!"
Perry kept his determined face on him.
"Oh, I bet you're wondering what I've been up to the past few days, hmm?" Doofenshmirtz guessed with a dismissive wave of his hand. He came around to circle the tarp-covered machine he had been working on. Grabbing the brown blanket, he pulled it off theatrically.
"Dun dun dun! It's my Flopinator!" Doofenshmirtz revealed. "I've fixed it!"
Perry's growl was more of a snort, as he fought not to choke on his laugh. The machine looked quite ridiculous. Though it inherently looked like the Flopinator, it seemed like it had rolled through a car dump with glue attached to it. There were all kinds of random mechanisms hanging out of it, including what looked to be the remnants of Doofenshmirtz's toast time machine.
"What! Don't laugh!" Doofenshmirtz demanded, annoyed. "I worked hard on that thing!"
Pointing to various parts, Doofenshmirtz explained. "I pulled out all the forks that landed inside it. And I tried to get the toast time machine lodged out of there, because all my toast keeps getting burnt and I really needed it… But it's just stuck in there! What did you do, Perry the Platypus? Land it in peanut butter JUST to get it stuck?"
Perry gave him an eye roll.
"But that shouldn't do much. We all know that combining Inators together does nothing. Remember the Very Very Bad Inator? We never even got to SEE what that did!" Doofenshmirtz came around to the other side of it. "But, as I was fixing the parts, I got an idea! Make it more…"
Doofenshmirtz linked his fingers together and wiggled them ominously, grinning. He tipped down his head in an effort to make shadows over his eyes. "…Evil! Hahahah!"
He pointed to his large computer with several monitors. "So I went online and I found an attachment for it. I ordered it from a foreign supplier, and it just arrived today!"
Holding up a black metal and hard plastic attachment, Doofenshmirtz explained, "Once I attach this to the Flopinator, it won't only flop people back and forth! It'll make them flop permanently!"
But then Doofenshmirtz tipped the object upside-down and examined all over it. "But it only works for as long as it has fuel. And I can't for the life of me figure out how to get it to start."
There was a white piece of paper on the nearby coffee table, and as Doofenshmirtz picked it up, Perry made it out to be an instruction page. The scientist squinted his eyes and turned the paper sideways, reading the fine print in the corner.
"It says… 'Runs on a constant input of Dihydrogen Monoxide.' Whatever THAT is." Then Doofenshmirtz tossed the paper back to the table, and kept looking at the device in his hand. "And it has some kind of a cone on top… like you're supposed to pour something into it? Where am I supposed to get Dihydrogen Monoxide? Like it would just fall out of the sky."
Doofenshmirtz then strolled over to his Flopinator, and began to fit the black add-on onto the side of his machine. He commented as he did it, "So I figured I would just stick it on here and see what happens."
Finishing screwing on the bolt, Doofenshmirtz stepped back. He waited for a moment. Nothing happened.
"Ah well, it was worth a shot," he conceded. Then he cocked his head. "Though with all those things sticking out of it… it looks like, art? Doesn't it, Perry the Platypus?"
Tilting his own head, Perry squinted at it. He put a paw on his bill and raised his mouth in examination. Ummm, it sort of did. Some crazy garage art.
"It'll look nice on my patio, don't you agree?" Doofenshmirtz suggested. He grabbed the handles and began to roll it out to his porch. In the process, he directed at Perry, "See? It was a week well wasted."
Turning to now use the side of his shoulder to push it, Doofenshmirtz thought to himself, "Although I suppose there's nothing evil about it. Some days it's an evil scheme, others it turns out to be a nice addition to the resell value of my building. Pick and choose."
Stopping the device outside, Doofenshmirtz bent down to look at it. He tapped with a finger on a little blinking light. "Though it's still pulsing for some reason. I never did find out why it was doing that."
He stepped backwards and looked at it, hands placed on his hips. He stared it all up and down. "Eh. I'll leave it plugged in. Flashing lights give the piece aesthetic significance!"
Turning to Perry, who was simply watching from a distance, Doofenshmirtz pointed out, "Well, Perry the Platypus. Looks like there's nothing evil for you to thwart today. Ta ta!"
Slowly shuffling his feet, Perry began to turn towards the door. Doofenshmirtz was right; that mass of metal didn't seem to be doing anything wrong, if it was just going to sit there and be an art decoration. But as he took a last glance over his shoulder, Perry had a feeling that this wasn't over yet.
