Journal Three
Gompers the goat moved up the stairs under the command of the program Bill had implanted.
"Maximum stealth mode; make no sound. Try to blend in to the background. Jump up onto the bed for a good vantage point," its control program silently directed.
"This attic is amazing. Check out all my splinters!" said Mabel.
She finished up hanging all her posters. Dipper had already hung up his new ship picture and was busy unpacking other stuff. He only looked up to see his sister's splinter-filled hands.
"And there's a goat on my bed," said Dipper.
The program directed, "Light brown hat with a stubby brown star on it. Snap it. Stubby Star is on the Ring."
Mabel moved closer and put out a hand. "Hey, friend."
"Get the sweater in your mouth to bring the symbol-wearer closer," directed the program.
"Oh! Yes, you can keep chewing on my sweater," said Mabel with a laugh.
"Magenta sweater with a shooting star with a rainbow tail. Snap it. Shooting Star is on the Ring. Twin stars for twin subjects, good symbols," directed the program. "Storing for later transmission when the Ring is full."
During the first week, Stan put the kids to work cleaning the gift shop. Mabel was curious and wanted to touch everything, but he soon put a stop to that.
"Don't touch the merchandise!" Stan snapped.
Mabel also flirted with all the boy customers, but he didn't mind that so much because kids in the store were annoying. He made her clean up the mess when she pushed over a card rack while trying to give one boy a playful shove.
"She's a strong little robot," he thought. "But kinda cute and funny, too."
The first weekend he suggested a family bonding art project. Stan wanted to test if the robots had uncanny artistic abilities. Could they copy money in fine detail? Not very well, as it turned out, but almost passable.
They were working in a cinder-block-lined room in the basement. There were steps down to it from the ground floor, but it didn't connect to the other part of the first-level basement, with the elevator to the tech and portal rooms. He thought it was secure, but there was a window and somebody must have spied in. Gideon, Stan was almost certain when he thought it over later.
Police lights flashed as Sheriff Blubbs and Deputy Durland arrived.
"We have a report of counterfeitin' in progress," said Blubbs.
"Come out of there quietly or we'll come in swingin' our nightsticks," said Durland.
They were carted off to the county jail. The officers confiscated all of their possessions for the night.
"Lookie here, Durland," said the Sheriff. "The kids have fancy computer phones."
"Oooh, can't let them have those in the cell," said the Deputy. "They might compute up an escape."
"Cell phone don't work well here, anyway," said Dipper. "There's hardly any reception. They don't get the internet and the only people we can call or text are each other."
"Ain't that just too bad," said the Sheriff, giggling to himself.
"Who knows what those crazy computer words mean, anyway?" Stan thought. He only knew good-old-days technology and a bit of advanced alien technology, not this modern junk.
Mabel complained of the cold in the cells. Stan almost felt guilty for dragging the robot kids into this. All right, admit it. He did feel guilty. They really were just like kids.
In the morning they were brought before a judge.
"Your honor, it was a family art project," said Stan. "We didn't try to pass off any of our work as money. Just look at it: it's not good enough to be real counterfeit, anyway. See that Benjamin Franklin? It looks like a woman."
The judge looked over the evidence and said, "Case dismissed. But don't do it again. I don't want to see any semi-realistic-looking-money 'art' projects from you any more."
Soos watched the kids in the store as they had a small argument over Mabel's flirting.
"Mabel, I know you're going through your whole 'Boy Crazy' phase, but I think you're kind of overdoing it with the 'crazy' part. "
"Come on, Dipper! This is our first summer away from home. It's my big chance to have an epic summer romance."
"Yeah, but do you need to flirt with every guy you meet?"
"Mock all you want, brother, but I've got a good feeling about this summer. I wouldn't be surprised if the man of my dreams walked through that door right now."
Enter Stan, belching. Under his arm were three wooden signs that Soos had made earlier that day: an "Enter" sign pointing left and two other signs pointing right.
"Oh, why?" said Mabel, disappointed it wasn't her dream man.
Dipper laughed.
"All right, all right, look alive people. I need someone to hang up these signs in the spooky part of the forest," said Stan.
Dipper, Mabel, and Soos all said, "Not it."
"Nobody asked you, Soos," said Stan.
"I know, and I'm comfortable with that," said Soos.
He ate a chocolate bar while Wendy lazily rejected the job from across the room.
Soos looked at the signs in Stan's arms. There was something wrong... He had located the tree which opened the hatch to the Journal 3 hiding place on an earlier sign-posting errand, but of course he had done nothing about it. Zeus didn't want to do 618 any favors. But if Domiclese found the Journal, he wouldn't show it to Stan...
That was it. The woods were already full of signs. If Dipper posted two more left-pointing signs, there was a natural progression of posting trees that would lead him to the hiding spot. But there was only one left-pointing sign and two right-pointing ones...
"That says "BEWARB," said Stan.
Soos saw this was correct; he must have spelled it wrong when he wrote with bug-attracting solution on Dipper's arm when Dipper was asleep.
"Look, kid. The whole 'monsters in the forest' thing is just local legend, trumped up by guys like me to sell merch to guys like that," said Stan.
Stan pointed to a fat customer laughing at a Stan bobble-head.
Soos was wearing his tool belt, and on it was his measuring tape. His measuring tape time-machine, to be exact. It was time to correct his mistake. He stepped out of the room and snapped back an hour and a half. He replaced his previous self for the duration of the jump, allowing a do-over.
"Oh, there you are, Soos," said the Stan of an hour-and-a-half ago. "I need you to paint up three more signs for the woods."
"Yes sir, Mr. Pines," said Soos.
This time Soos made two left-pointing signs and one right-pointing sign, the "Enter" sign. Back to the new future he went.
"So quit being so paranoid!" said Stan. He dropped the signs into Dipper's arms and now they were in the correct orientation.
Soos wasn't worried about a paradox-correcting reaction in this case. The outcome he wanted to affect was in the future, Dipper finding the Journal. It wasn't overlapped by the jump. The part he changed, the direction of the signs, was completely under his control.
Gompers smelled something odd about the signs Dipper was carrying (a slight whiff of tachyons, according to the control program in him). He followed Dipper at a distance to the woods where the signs were to be posted.
When Dipper activated the control that revealed Journal 3, Gompers was right there. His goat reflexes made him jump back at the sudden movement of the trapdoor.
Dipper dusted off the book and started to read it. Gompers tried to get it from him, but when that didn't work he recorded Dipper as the book holder, to be monitored and protected.
Things happened a little too fast for Gompers a few days later, when Mabel was kidnapped by the gnome colony and Dipper went after her. Fortunately they rescued themselves.
One gnome was left trapped in the plastic rings from a soda six-pack. The control program directed Gompers to carry him off. When they were unobserved, the program spoke to the gnome in goat bleats (gnomes can speak to animals).
"You have angered my master," said Gompers. "You will never harm that boy or kidnap his sister again. If you do, my master will inflict nightmares on you all."
"W-what if she comes back to us of her own free will?" asked the gnome.
"She must consent without coercion," Gompers said. "In that very unlikely event, you may have her. But you must bring her back when my master requires, for the ceremony."
"How long?" asked the gnome.
"A month or two," said the goat.
The gnome made some quick calculations. "A thousand of us, at a hundred a day... that gives us each at least three times. It's a deal."
"Only with her free consent," the goat said. "Otherwise, you must let her go, if she ever falls into your hands again."
The original "Stubby Star" hat was replaced by Dipper with a "Pine Tree" hat; Gompers was soon able to capture that image for the Ring.
And Dipper, with the help of Journal 3, was going to learn a lot more about Gravity Falls than Bill had intended. That pleased Soos.