Future Tense

(July 2018)

12-The Great Debate

Two hours before the scheduled start time, a huge crowd—well, huge for Gravity Falls, anyway—filled the seats in the Woodstick arena. Gabbling to each other, laughing at well-worn jokes, visiting and gossiping, they craned to stare at what was going on up on the stage.

Nothing, really. Mayor Cutebiker had ordered the set-up: three lecterns, three microphones. Stan would take the stage right lectern, Tyler as moderator would have the middle one, and the challenger would take the stage left position. Tyler and Stan had been sitting on two of the three folding chairs upstage from the speakers' positions for half an hour. The debate would begin in about three minutes, but so far Punt was a no-show.

The crowd already seemed restless. The early arrivals had taken up the VIP stands by 8:45, and now, over an hour later, every row of the bleachers had been filled, and some were sitting on beach towels up on the grass. Tyler looked around and said to Stan, "We better do a sound check. If Punt doesn't show up, then you can make your speech and take questions."

"Fine with me," Stan said.

"Take your mike, and I'll try the others."

The two men got up, approached the stands, and the crowd noise fell in volume. Somebody yelled, "Where's the TV star?"

Tyler waved and looked over to the control booth.

"It's show time!" Mabel announced. She and Dipper were running the sound board, while Teek and Wendy had been ushering citizens in and helping them find seats. Dipper activated the center microphone but kept it at a low gain. The board was a little temperamental and if not set precisely, it would respond with a screeching objection of feedback.

"Testing, onesie, twosie," Tyler said. "Little louder, please?"

Clenching his teeth, Dipper nudged the slider up just a bit.

Tyler said, "Hello, hello, hello. Can everybody hear me?"

The crowd gave a chorus of "Yeah!" and a few smart-asses yelled, "No!" or "What?" There are always a few.

"Oh, you!" Tyler said. He gestured to Stan and then walked toward the third mike.

Dipper kept his finger on Stan's slider because Stan tended to talk loud anyway. But wonder of wonders, Stan just said, "Hi, how ya doin'?" and the sound came clear and the speakers didn't squeal.

Tyler had them adjust the third mike levels, and then he went back to the moderator's position. "All righty, everything seems to be working. We're gonna wait just a while for the other candidate to make an appearance. Be patient, everybody."

Someone tapped on the sound-booth door, Mabel opened it, and Wendy and Teek came in. "How's things going?" Wendy asked.

"Fine, so far," Mabel said cheerfully. "Old Poop-head hasn't shown up. Hey, Dipper, if he doesn't come, is Grunkle Stan the automatic winner?"

"I think we still have to have the vote," Dipper said.

Teek stood behind Mabel and massaged her shoulders. "If Punt doesn't even bother to debate," he said, "nobody would vote for him, so—"

"Dip," Mabel said, "can Wendy take over here? Me and Teek want to go backstage and watch from there. Just in case old Pukey Punt does show up and tries any funny business."

"Sure, go ahead," Wendy said. "I'll help Dip out here."

"Thanks! Bye! Come on, Teek!" the two of them bustled out, holding hands, and Wendy slipped into the chair that Mabel had occupied.

"OK, Dip, give me a quick lesson in how to operate this thing," Wendy said, reaching for Dipper's hand.

Dipper smiled and then mentally reviewed everything he knew about how to work the mixer. —That's about it. You get that?

Think so, Dipper. Back-stop me if I do something wrong.

—Don't worry, Wen. It's not that hard. And unless one of them starts shouting, all we have to do is sit here and watch the levels. Um, Wen?

Yeah? Oh, you're thinking about Amy Hazard? Don't worry, Dip, even if she's really interested in me, it's not gonna matter. I'll turn her down. You're all I want or need.

—Love you, Wen.

Love you, too, Dip. So much. Oh, shit, he's showed up.

The crowd had started to cheer. Burnwald Punt, wearing his ridiculously long red power tie and a dark suit, his probably tinted hair coiffed, made his way down the center aisle toward the stage, waving at the crowd, pumping his fist, and calling out something they couldn't catch. Somebody showed him where the steps up to the stage were, and he climbed up, holding his arms up in a victory gesture. Then he walked to the mike and said, "How are ya?" scowling, he added, "Turn this thing up! They want to hear Punt!"

"You asked for it," Dipper said, moving the slider.

"There!" Punt yelled. A banshee scream of feedback made everybody, including him, wince. "Damn it, not that loud! Idiot!"

Dipper nudged the slider back to the exact same level where it had begun.

"OK, OK, yeah, you finally got it right. If that moron of a sound guy had been on Clawing to the Top, I'd have fired him in the first round! Right, everybody?"

He got a laugh, but Wendy reached for the mixer board. "I'm gonna cut the bastard off."

"No, let him go," Dipper said. "He's the kind of guy who'll shoot himself in his own foot."

Scowling, Wendy settled back in her chair.

Onstage, the Mayor was waving for quiet. "All right, all right," Tyler called out over the crowd noise. "We're a little bitty bit late, so we're gonna get started, right? Now, the way we're gonna do this is that each candidate gets five minutes to state a position, the other one gets five minutes to rebut, and then we move on to the next question. After ninety minutes, we'll have half an hour for questions from the floor and that will wrap us up. The first one in the race is Stanley Pines, over on my right, so we'll start with him."

"That's the last time this putz will come in first, am I right?" Punt said into his mike, getting another laugh.

Wendy said, "I swear, Dip, I'm gonna cut him off!"

"No, wait, just be cool," Dipper said. "Stan wouldn't want us to do that."

"All right, all right, simmer down," Tyler said. "We'll alternate, OK? Mr. Pines, first topic: Tell us your vision for Gravity Falls if you become Mayor. Five minutes."

Dipper started the timer.

"Thanks, Mayor Cutebiker," Stan rumbled. "Hello, friends and neighbors. My vision is for a Gravity Falls that's a place where we all get along together, where everybody has what they need to be productive and—"

"He's a communist!" Punt yelled.

"—and where everyone is a valued—"

"Radical left garbage! Right out of Karl Marx! Communist propaganda!" Punt yelled.

Flustered, Tyler said, "Now, now, you'll have your turn—"

"Pines is following the socialist playbook!" Punt said, plowing ahead. "He's gonna take away your jobs and your guns!"

"Now, hold on!" Stan said, red in the face.

And . . . it got worse.

Punt's turn was taken up with generalities. "He's not saying anything really!" Wendy exclaimed.

Dipper's jaw was tight and his face was red, but he didn't reply to Wendy as down on stage, Punt rambled: "You got resources here, everybody could be a millionaire! Not if a socialist government confiscates your stuff, but if I'm Mayor! You could restart the mines, there are beautiful mines, nobody's ever seen mines like this, now they're just holes in the ground, but with me, money pours in! These woods, you know how much I could sell lumber for, I make a tremendous deal, I make the best deals, right? So everybody gets rich, right? Capitalism, it's beautiful. The American way, yeah?"

The most surprising moment came about twenty minutes in. Punt was holding forth, still speaking in half-sentences and disconnected ideas, when Jeff and five other Gnomes came in, filed right down front, and sat on the ground staring at Punt, who belatedly noticed the small figures in red caps.

"Opportunities, and I mean anybody who wants to do the work, not people who want a nanny government to take care of them like little babies, chase them out, who needs them, am I what in God's name are those?"

Even from inside the booth, Dipper and Wendy could hear Jeff's angry yell: "We're Gnomes and we're citizens! And we can vote!"

Now, once the humans of Gravity Falls would have been perturbed to run across a Gnome or two. More than one of them had been known to choose a shot from a memory eraser gun rather than acknowledge the existence of the little people.

However, since Weirdmageddon, when everyone had stood shoulder to shoulder, or in the case of Gnomes, shoulder to shin, united against Bill Cipher, the Gnomes had gradually become members of the community. They got invited to birthday parties. Heck, they quaffed beer and sat in on poker games in the back room of the Skull Fracture, and in the Falls, nobody got more accepted than that. So Punt's overreaction startled the humans in the audience.

For the first time since the debate had started, Punt stayed silent as Stan got his turn to talk. He was speaking about tourism and its economic advantage to the Falls, and despite the number of times Punt had heckled him, he stayed on topic and spoke forcefully and well—he had run the Falls' premiere tourist attraction for thirty years, and he knew what he was talking about.

His opponent's attention focused on the Gnomes sitting almost under him. Punt's rebuttal—was odd. He stood at the lectern and boomed, "These little guys, these criminals, coming in here, taking our jobs! Send 'em back! They're creepy, am I right? Dealing drugs, trying to steal our daughters! Rapists! You know what? When I'm Mayor, I'm building a wall right across the way into the Valley! Dri ve these animals out and close the wall! Keep out the riffraff, am I right? A beautiful wall, all the way to the top of the cliffs! And we'll take all the stuff they've stolen, and the Gnomes will pay for it!'

The crowd started to argue, most objecting to this notion.

But some of them seemed to be supporting Punt.

"Uh-oh," Dipper moaned.

By the Q&A session, the debate had collapsed into a shambles. Punt would not shut up. Stan grew increasingly furious and seemed to be holding himself in only with a great effort. When at last a frazzled Tyler said, "That concludes the debate, folks. Remember to fill in your ballots and return them by five o'clock Tuesday to make your voices heard. Now, git—git on home."

Dipper and Wendy closed down the sound board and then she said, "Dip, we better get down there, fast!"

"What's wrong?"

"Punt and Stan went backstage, and the Gnomes followed them!"

They ran down the slope, up onto the stage, and through the backdrop, hearing Stan yelling: "You wanna throw down, Punt? Come on, I'll take ya on!"

"Watch your mouth, Jewboy! I have ways of handling punks like you!"

The Gnomes clustered near Stan, but Jeff strode toward Punt, his small fists clenched. "Yeah," he yelled. "Where are your three tough guys, Punt? Know what happened to them? Gnomes never forget!"

"I could stomp you like a bug!" Punt screamed.

Mabel and Teek were holding Stan back. He had shed his jacket and rolled up his shirt sleeves, and even without knuckle dusters, he looked dangerous. Punt was on the other side of a backstage table, purple with anger and threatening to boot Jeff.

"Hey, stop it!" Dipper yelled.

Punt scowled at him. "Stay out of this, kid! I'll—"

Whack!

Punt jerked away from the table, glaring at the axe quivering there. The blade had embedded itself deep in the top.

"You won't do anything," Wendy said. She wrenched her axe free. "Mr. Punt, you got business elsewhere. Better go now."

Punt wavered, eyeing the axe. He shook his finger at Wendy. "Bitch, just wait until I'm Mayor! I'll take care of you and him and all of them! And I'll throw these little sawed-off buggers out of the Valley! I'll show you all!"

He strode off. Jeff started after him, but Wendy said, "Jeff, cool it, man. Anything we do here gets us in trouble. Just be sure your guys know to vote."

"Hey, Jeff," Stan said as he put his jacket back on, "how are the ones that got shot?"

Jeff took three long, deep breaths. "Getting better. Two are having a hard time."

"Anything I can do to help, just ask."

"This time," Jeff said, "I think it's up to us Gnomes. But thanks, Stan."

For a moment silence fell.

Then Mabel spoke up, brightly: "That went well!"