Potential trigger warning for the beginnings of a panic attack at the end.
Ugh, Stan hated mornings.
This one was starting off especially bad, though, even though the alarm clock hadn't gone off for some reason, because he had a weird crick in his neck telling him that he'd slept on it funny, and apparently he'd fallen asleep with his shoes on again, Ma'd have a conniption if he'd got dirt on the sheets after she'd barely washed them-
He opened his eyes a crack, and cruel memory came flooding back when he saw the purple wallpaper across from him.
Oh. That's right. Pa kicked me out after I messed up Ford's project, and then I got kidnapped by a pharmacist and a duck-beaver who I'm still not ruling out as secretly aliens.
Even if they haven't tried to eat my brains or dissect me yet.
Stan knew he should probably get up and try to see where the aliens were, figure out what their nefarious plan for him was, stuff like that. It was what anyone in an adventure movie would do, and in the process they'd probably save the world and get the pretty girl in the end.
For the moment, though, he just...couldn't.
To be honest, Stan wasn't sure if he was capable of doing anything ever again, except burrowing farther under his blanket and-
Wait, blanket?
Stan looked at it in surprise; he didn't remember having a blanket when he'd fallen asleep. But it was soft, and warm, and finally he just shrugged and burrowed back into it.
He just wanted to hide under this mystery blanket and never do anything again.
Besides kick his shoes off so his feet would be more comfortable.
However, the sound of hammering kept him from going back to sleep, and eventually Stan sat up, pulling the blanket around his shoulders, and rubbed his eyes.
Now that he was calm enough to get a good look at the windows, he realized that this might not be a flying saucer after all. He doubted that most flying saucers had a consistent view of a big city skyline. He wasn't sure what it was, but the odds of it being a flying saucer were decreasing by the second. Far more likely that it was a secret alien base or something.
Slowly Stan stood up, still wearing the blanket, and took a few hesitant steps in the direction of the hammering.
His stomach rumbled a little, reminding him that it had been a long time since he'd last eaten. Since the aliens had hot chocolate, maybe if he was lucky they'd have bacon too. Or breadsticks. Or toff-
No.
With a sad little grimace Stan shuffled along to a door that seemed to be the source of the noise, and peered inside.
The pharmacist (Dr. Doof-and-something) was standing in front of yet another weird machine, hammering together two large pieces of metal that seemed like they were meant to fit on the front of the thing. Strewn on the ground next to him was a pile of tools and pieces of equipment, which included a screwdriver, an electric drill, and other odds and ends that were fairly recognizable.
Huh. Stan had thought aliens would have more sophisticated technology than that.
He looked around cautiously for the duck-beaver, but there was no sign of him.
The pharmacist turned around to grab the screwdriver, and saw Stan.
"Oh good, you're finally awake! How'd you sleep?"
Stan shrugged. Suddenly he was feeling very self-conscious at remembering how he'd just had a meltdown in front of this man (alien?) and basically spilled his dirty secrets to him.
The pharmacist tilted his head and looked at him with a small frown that almost seemed concerned. "Yeah, well, you've been napping all afternoon, so I bet you're hungry. You wanna order takeout?"
"Uh...sure."
Afternoon? But-it was nighttime when I got kicked out...how long have I been here?
The pharmacist reached into his lab coat and pulled out a small device that looked like metal or plastic or something, and flipped the top part open.
Heh. Looks like a communicator from Star Trek. There's another clue pointing to 'alien.'
The pharmacist/alien tapped at it with one finger, frowning in focus, and then lifted it to his ear.
"Hello? Yes, hi, can I have an extra-large order of hot wings?" He glanced over at Stan. "You like hot wings, right?"
Stan nodded, a little dazedly.
"Yeah, an extra-large order. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. No, that's fine. Ranch, please." Then, with sudden realization, he glanced over at Stan. "You want any sauces?"
Stan's mouth opened and shut for a moment, before he finally said, "...Barbecue?"
The pharmacist gave a surprised blink, but said into the device, "Ranch and barbecue sauce, please. No, no, that's fine. 9297 Polly Parkway. Yes, that big purple building, we live in the penthouse. Uh-huh. Okay, thank you." He hung up and flipped it closed. "Sorry, I'm not used to getting an answer back, since Perry the Platypus just makes that digga-digga-digga-digga noise and I don't see a lot of other people except Charlene, and she doesn't like hot wings all that much."
"...Charlene?"
The pharmacist made a face, somewhere between sad, angry and bitter. "Oh, right, sorry, forgot you're kind of out of the loop. Charlene's my almost-entirely-ex-wife. We're still getting it finalized."
Huh. Either aliens have the same kind of relationships and marriage systems we do, or...he's a mad scientist or something.
...Wait a minute.
"That thing is a platypus? I thought those were brown."
The pharmacist shrugged. "Yeah, I think it's some kind of genetic quirk. Or maybe he paints his fur himself because it's his idea of-" he made finger quotes in the air- "'artsy.'"
Stan wondered if this day could possibly get anymore surreal.
Cue the "Be careful what you wish for" alert.
"Food should get here in about fifteen minutes-hopefully a little longer than that so we can get it for free." The pharmacist turned back to his machine. "In the meantime, you wanna give me a hand with this?"
Stan flinched, as his stomach churned. "Um...I haven't had a lotta luck with machines recently."
The pharmacist gave him a confused look. "What are you talking about, I didn't know you-" Then he stopped, and his eyes widened. "...Oh." He grimaced. "Eesh, that was bad timing, wasn't it?"
Stan gave a tiny nod. "Yeah."
"...Well, can you at least hold the blueprints for me so I can see what I'm doing?"
That didn't sound so bad; he probably could avoid destroying someone else's important work by just standing by and holding the blueprints.
Stan slowly let the blanket fall from his shoulders, and shuffled over, picking up the blueprints and holding them up for the pharmacist/alien/mad scientist.
"Thank you, that's much better." After looking them over for a moment, he snatched up some tools and went back to work.
For a few minutes Stan just stood and watched him work, and even though he wasn't the one with the brains for this kind of stuff, began trying to figure out what this thing he was building actually did.
Whatever it was, it was pretty cool: based on the blueprints, it was going to be some kind of giant laser gun, like you'd see the villain using in a pulp fiction magazine, or one of those really cheesy sci-fi movies. It looked big and powerful enough to destroy an entire office building, or even a whole town.
"...Where'd ya get the designs for this thing?" he asked, peering down at the blueprints curiously.
"Oh, I made them myself!" said the mad/pharmacist/alien cheerfully. "Drew them up a few hours ago and went and got them copyrighted, so nobody else can claim ownership. You wouldn't believe how many mad scientists there are in the Tri-State Area who are evil enough to steal the rights to someone else's doomsday device!"
Stan tried to understand that for a moment, then gave up and focused on the part he did understand. "...You designed this thing yourself, a few hours ago?" Holy Moses, that's...that's pretty cool, actually. He might be even better at stuff like this than Fo-
"Yeah, it's kind of my thing!" The mad scientist/alien looked very proud of himself, puffing out his little pigeon chest and smirking. Then he sighed, and his shoulders drooped back into their usual slouch. "The real challenge is keeping Perry the Platypus from destroying them afterwards, since he's managed to do that a lot." He paused. "More than a lot." He paused again. "Every day since the one we met. Usually leaving my apartment a burning, smoldering wreck, and then I gotta get the cleaning crew to come take care of it, which doesn't come cheap, let me tell you…"
He was still talking, but Stan had stopped paying strict attention. He had suddenly focused in on a corner on the back of the blueprints, with a tag on it with a name, Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz (so that was his name), followed by the copyright date. His gaze was fixed on the date.
"...and then she said, 'Well, maybe you should just hire someone to do it,' and I told her I could figure it out myself, but she said that I can't admit when I'm wrong, and I tried using Mr. Tomato to tell her-um, kid? Stanley? Am I just talking to myself?"
Stan told himself that he had to be wrong. That he really had been kidnapped by aliens or was in an alternate dimension or something, or his eyes were playing tricks on him because he didn't wear his glasses like he was supposed to. Or this was a trick of some kind, as he stared down at the year emblazoned on the tag.
Somehow, Doofenshmirtz seemed to realize what he was looking at; when he spoke again, it was in a somewhat softer tone (at least, as soft as his scratchy voice was capable of being). "Oh, yeah. Thought I told you about that, but maybe you were still in shock and didn't hear me right. You got brought here by accident with my Time Travel-Inator. So whatever time period you're from, it's probably not this one."
Stan couldn't hear if he said anything else, even as his mind did some quick calculations and realized that he'd just come about 31 years into the future, and that meant that everyone he knew-Pa and Mom and Ford and Shermie and Carla and even jerks like Crampelter and the Sibling Brothers-was-they were probably all really old by now, and-
Suddenly he couldn't breathe.
I have no idea how copyright works in the real world. But since in the Tri-State Area most people seem to get things like this done over the course of only one day, I figured it wasn't too out of character.