Wendy's beater truck rattled down a wooded county road, avoiding the signs that directed would-be visitors towards the downtown of Gravity Falls. The former Northwest Manor was secluded, as it was intended to be far from the prying eyes of the common rabble of the town's pioneer origins. In the modern day, this meant that the trip to the manor was a pleasant, albeit boring, drive through the forest. While earlier on in his break Dipper had loved the sight of Oregon forests covered in snow, the sight of them from a passenger window was just a reminder that he would be leaving Gravity Falls sooner rather than later. At which point, he'd have plenty of time to watch the trees go by on the bus.
"Any idea what sorts of things they've done to the place?" Wendy asked before reaching down to the center console of the truck and grabbing a handful of pretzels. While there were a lot of things Dipper enjoyed about Wendy's company, her use of her truck's cup holders as improvised snack bowls was… questionable. He politely declined when she gestured to encourage him to partake as well.
"Well, I know McGucket has taken to calling it his Hootenanny Hut, which raises more questions than it answers," replied Dipper. "I guess we'll see when we get there."
"It's gonna be weird, huh?" Wendy laughed, crunching down on a pretzel. "Ugh, I need to refresh the stash more often, these are mega stale." Dipper grimaced, which in turn made Wendy laugh even harder. She took a hard left turn off the main road, entering a driveway bordered by two stone pillars engraved with the letters 'NW' in stately typeface.
The approach to the manor was a winding drive, steeply climbing to the top of an imposing hill. While the driveway was paved with carefully laid cobblestones, the lack of plowing and maintenance made what had originally been a luxury a liability. Several times, Wendy's tires screeched as they lost traction on icy cobblestones, but with crafty maneuvering and four-wheel drive, she recovered quickly each time and kept the truck barreling towards the manor.
Finally, at the top of the hill, they passed another set of pillars, this time as part of the iron front gates of the main property. While constructed during the lumber baron era largely from timber, the building still managed to tower imposingly, stretching nearly five normal stories at its gabled peak, and ordained with some of the most intricate sculpture work he had seen outside of photos of Buckingham Palace. The last time he had been here, it had been dark and rainy, but the mansion looked no less intimidating in the light of day, with dark staining and adornments to send a strong message to anyone who saw it - keep away.
As the truck progressed towards the building, row after row of hedges zoomed past Dipper's window. The previous time he had visited, not a single detail on the grounds had escaped the attention of the status-wary Northwest family. But now, even as they passed the topiary garden at high speed, he could see that the hedges were beginning to grow wild without the constant attention of gardening staff. While Dipper didn't particularly care for Preston Northwest, or hold any strong feelings whatsoever regarding Priscilla Northwest, he couldn't help but wonder how Pacifica would feel if she saw her home beginning to descend from its original, immaculate condition.
Wendy pulled her truck around an incredibly ornate marble fountain, screeching to a halt directly in front of the grand entry. After a moment of staring up at the towering architecture through her truck's sunroof, she asked, "Dipper, have you had Princess Paz explain to you yet how their family got, like, Dracula wealthy?"
"I mean," mumbled Dipper awkwardly, "it kind of has a lot to do with abusing the labor of your relatives." Wendy squinted at the wood framing for a moment, considering Dipper's reply.
Dipper did find it to be a bit ironic that just months after he had lifted the Corduroy lumberjack curse off of Northwest Manor, one of the first things Preston Northwest did was to try and rip off "Manly Dan" for his work on the ski resort. While it was Preston who paid the price this time, it made Dipper question if Pacifica's personal growth and Wendy's laid back nature could mean an end to the undeclared class war between their two families. As he watched the lanky teenager stare solemnly up at the massive castle built with her family's blood, he wondered if Wendy was pondering the same questions.
"Huh," replied Wendy. "Well, not my problem anymore. We going in or what?"
'Apparently not.'
Dipper nodded, while Wendy grabbed a handful of pretzels before turning off her truck and stepping out towards the front door.
Inside the manor, Dipper immediately sensed a change in tone from when it was owned by the Northwests. The first thing he noticed was the change in light fixtures, oddly enough. The heritage sconces and chandeliers had been replaced with brighter, modern lights. Brighter illumination went a long way towards giving the imposing structure a more welcoming ambiance, and it made further changes more noticeable. Gone was the gigantic fossil skeleton that had hung from the ceiling, and many of the priceless paintings that had previously adorned the walls had been replaced with art prints by a commercial artist well known for his saccharine, glowing renditions of woodland scenes.
As Wendy and Dipper approached the entry staircase, it was impossible to miss that almost every surface was decorated with either taxidermy raccoons or banjos. Across the entry hall, rocking chairs were haphazardly scattered about, each with cushions that differed in size and pattern. But most fascinating to Dipper was the carpet - the one Pacifica had lived in fear of damaging - had been ripped up to reveal the original hardwood flooring underneath, which fit the room far better anyway.
The pair were so taken in by the surroundings that they barely noticed the Pines twins approaching to greet them.
"Dipper, my boy!" Ford greeted warmly, gesturing around the room. "Welcome to McGucket Manor."
"Hootenanny Hut," corrected Stan gruffly. Ford groaned.
"I told you, Stanley," he turned, shaking his head, "I just can't bear to call an architectural gem like this something so disrespectful."
"And that's why I insist on it," Stan grinned cheekily. Ford rolled his eyes and turned his focus back to Dipper.
"Where is Fiddleford, anyway?" Dipper asked, looking around at the various varmint taxidermy sculptures scattered throughout the hall.
"To be honest with you, I'm not quite sure," Ford admitted, looking towards Stan in confusion. He shrugged, making no attempt to hide his disinterest in both the question and the answer. "It's such a large manor, I'm sure he's around here somewhere. In any case, I'm glad you stopped by to visit, Dipper. And friend," he quickly added, nodding to Wendy. She responded by pointing finger guns, complete with a clicking sound with from her mouth.
"Follow me to my new lab." Excitedly, Ford began leading the party towards a doorway to the left of the grand staircase, "it's in the old wine cellar. Stan is helping me to clear out all the wine left behind."
"Wait, are you selling them or drinking them?" asked Wendy. Stan grinned again.
"Little bit of A, little bit of B," Stan replied, in a tone that was impossible to gauge as joking or sincere.
"I'm just afraid he's going to uncover some poor sap bricked up behind a wall," muttered Ford. "We are talking about the Northwest family, after all. Apparently, they were forced to move so quickly that they left behind a small fortune in vintage wine. A rounding error for someone like Preston, but certainly more than a university research grant. Fiddleford is too busy with his robots to try and do anything with it, so he's letting Stan and I sell them off to raise funds for future expeditions."
To the side of the old cellar door was a new security terminal, one with trademark touches that Dipper immediately recognized as Ford's handiwork. After placing his hand on the terminal and looking directly into binocular sights, several electronic locks clicked and the door automatically swung open. Ford ventured into the darkness, followed immediately by Stan and Wendy.
Before following the others down into the cellar, Dipper felt the phone in his pocket vibrate. He pulled it out and found that Pacifica had just sent him a message.
PACIFICA: Hey Dipper, you have the phone right now?
Dipper quickly began replying. While he generally enjoyed the freedom and lack of pressure to join social media that came with not having a phone of his own, recent developments in his social life were making him wonder if he ought to reconsider the phone he shared with Mabel.
MYSTERY TWINS HOTLINE: Yep, it's me. How's the diner?
Immediately, he could see Pacifica begin to respond to his message, stop, begin again, and stop again. 'That's weird,' he thought, 'she's usually a lot more decisive than this.' Finally, Pacifica committed and sent her response.
PACIFICA: It's been better. I could use some encouragement. And a hug.
Dipper laughed to himself. Given the challenge of seeing one another with her extra hours at the diner, the pair had taken to sending quick selfies as a way to pep the other up. Pacifica usually called on Dipper for encouragement when she was at work, while Dipper had been asking Pacifica for the same when stuck at the Mystery Shack during the day. It was silly, but it was a fun attempt to get a glimpse into each others' days while they were apart.
"You coming, Dipper?" Wendy called up from the wine cellar. "It's nuts down here!"
Dipper quickly opened the camera app, took a quick selfie of himself smiling, and sent it to Pacifica without a second thought. It was only after the photo finished sending that he realized the background of his selfie was the grand staircase of the manor.
"Oh no," he gasped, panicked. He moved his finger over the photo, holding down until the text menu gave him the option to 'unsend' his message. But it was too late - a read receipt appeared below the photo, and Pacifica had begun to reply.
"Dipper, the door lock is on a timer," called Ford, his voice echoing up. "I'd make a move now unless you want to be stuck upstairs." As if on cue, the terminal next to the door began giving off loud warning beeps.
Snapping back to reality, Dipper burst into a run to make it through the cellar door, moments before it closed. As he caught his breath, he looked back down at the phone in his hands and noticed two things. First, he saw that behind a heavy cellar door surrounded by stone and earth, the wireless connection he had been using moments before was now gone. Second, he noticed the last reply from Pacifica.
PACIFICA: Looks familiar…
A wave of guilt washed over Dipper, realizing that he likely made whatever stress Pacifica was going through worse while trying to cheer her up. But there was little he could do about that now, aside from joining the others in Ford's new lab and replying with an apology as soon as he could. With a frustrated sigh, Dipper pocketed the phone and made his way down the dark, rickety staircase to the wine cellar.
At the landing, Dipper was greeted by a sprawling array of heavy-duty computers and lab equipment. While the structure of the room was characteristic of a wine cellar, with wooden beams crisscrossing the ceiling and an earthy floor, the machinery around was all dark and metallic, with glowing green text emitting from screens and diodes flashing in a multitude of hues. Ford stood proudly in the center of it all, showing off what appeared to be a laser slingshot to Wendy. Meanwhile, Stan sat in the corner on a laptop computer, staring intently at a wine pricing website. And if Dipper had momentarily forgotten that they were in a wine cellar, every surface not covered by computer equipment was occupied by rows and rows of dusty bottles of wine.
"Ah, Dipper! Welcome to my new command center!" beamed Ford, rushing over to guide Dipper towards a specific bank of computer monitors. Unlike the others around the room, these screens were gigantic and full color, showing off a variety of complicated charts and graphs that were updated in real-time. Ford took a seat in front of a keyboard, typed intently for a few seconds, and conjured a map of the United States onto one of the screens. While most of the map was shaded blue, certain areas glowing in varied shades of red, and the brightest and reddest of all was central Oregon. "I'm still in shock how much computers in this dimension have progressed in thirty years. It nearly bankrupted me to build the old bunker under the Mystery Shack, but not only was this new lab cheaper to construct, it's a hundred times more powerful! As a result, I've decided to expand my studies of weirdness to find other pockets of activity like the one I discovered in Gravity Falls."
"I thought you said you came here because this was the greatest concentration of anomalies in the world," asked Dipper, trying to take in the various locations he was seeing highlighted on the map.
"That's absolutely the case, and still is. But while there's a great density of weirdness here, there are other places with far more powerful weirdness at work. And I'm working on categorizing past events of extreme weirdness as well," Ford tapped away at the keyboard, and the map gave way to a revolving photo collection of artifacts and old documents. "With all this data, I'll be able to plan future expeditions to hotspots all over the world. And if Stanley can generate enough capital from the sale of these old wine casks, we'll never run out of travel funding."
Ford handed Dipper a printout, detailing a list of priorities for future expeditions. Some of the locations were major cities, like Los Angeles or Milwaukee. Others were wider regions, like 'the Mojave Desert' and 'Blue Ridge Mountains.' But it was the small town on the top of the list that amused Dipper the most. "Not every day you see a travel bucket list start with Gravesfield, Connecticut," he quipped. Ford chuckled in recognition, before pulling up onto the screen several images of suspected weirdness activity and a strange-looking woman with a mischievous grin.
"There've been both historical and contemporary reports of a powerful portal opening up somewhere in that vicinity, and I've been swapping emails with a researcher there who believes that some kind of unknown force is wreaking havoc in the town. I want to understand how it works and if it can bring us closer to truly understanding the deeper mechanics of interdimensional travel."
A chill rippled through Dipper as he contemplated what he had just heard. The towns and locations on the page in front of him suddenly took on a new, terrifying context as he realized that each one represented an opportunity for the unintended consequences of dimensional travel. His thoughts began to race, too quickly to focus on or hang onto.
His reaction was strong enough that Ford took notice, placing a hand on Dipper's shoulder to steady him. "Dipper?" he asked cautiously.
Dipper finally looked up from the printout at his Great Uncle Ford, who stared back at him with a concerned frown. "You're doing portal research again?" Ford opened his mouth to explain, but Dipper's accusation snapped both Wendy and Stan to attention.
"Wait a minute, you're doing what?" barked Stan, striding over to the terminal behind Dipper, followed closely by Wendy. "You promised me you were done with all that portal junk."
Ford stood up from the terminal and defensively crossed his arms.
"I said no such thing. I told you that I was done trying to build my own portal. For now. I said nothing about studying ones that already exist, and I reserved the right to return to inventing interdimensional travel when I felt more confident in the technology."
Stan scoffed. "Sixer, you're full of it. That's not what you said on the Stan-o-War and you know it."
"It's not my fault you didn't understand what I promised."
"The entire town was destroyed less than six months ago," furiously interjected Wendy, "how can you possibly justify doing something like that again?"
"If you recall, Bill Cipher tricked me," Ford explained. While he kept a calm facade, Dipper could tell from the pitch of his voice that he could barely contain his contempt for the pushback he was receiving. "He told me that I was building a doorway to every dimension imaginable. However, in reality, he gave me instructions on how to build a doorway to just one place - the Nightmare Realm. The crawl space of the wider multiverse. It was only through my dimensional travels where I discovered that other versions of me had successfully completed the portal through the use of a dimensional vortex neutralizer and that without it, any other attempt to dial out through the portal would short out into the Nightmare Realm."
Ford paused to look to each of the group in turn, reading the temperature of the room. When it was Dipper's turn, Dipper looked down at his hands awkwardly.
"When Stan brought me back," Ford continued, "my first instinct was to dismantle the portal to prevent anything from coming back through the Nightmare Realm to our reality. As we all know, that was hardly protection enough. Reflecting on my past failures, I've come to the conclusion that the only way we can truly protect ourselves is to complete our own dimensional vortex neutralizer, both to protect ourselves from what's out there, and to make sure someone else doesn't accidentally try what I already know to be a mistake."
"What if you bring through something even worse?" added Stan. "If there are multiple versions of you out there, how do we know there isn't, just spitballing here, an evil square waiting for his turn to try and wreck the world?" He glanced over at the monitors behind Ford and squinted in confusion. "Also, what are you doing with photos of my ex-wife?"
"This is years away, Stan," Ford replied, choosing to ignore Stan's observation and focus on the subject at hand. "I hate to sound insensitive, but my work is inspired by the combined efforts of a much younger alternate version of myself, and a Fiddleford whose mind remained in one piece. The only place I can even think to start trying to do this on my own is to find similar portals occurring naturally in our world and studying how they manage to sidestep the Nightmare Realm. That amounts to substantial research and investigation before we can even think about trying to rebuild the portal. But someone is going to figure this technology out eventually, Stanley. Would you prefer it was someone who understands and takes precautions for the risks, or someone as naive as I was thirty years ago?"
"I just…" Dipper began, stopping himself as Ford turned his intense gaze towards him. 'It was a dream, not something to bother Ford with,' intruded his inner critic, but a sinking feeling in his gut told him that if Ford was going to start experimenting with portals and interdimensional travel again, he needed to know for sure. "Great Uncle Ford, I had this weird dream about Bill Cipher last night. What if he's still out there, somehow, and we accidentally start the weirdness all over again?"
"Impossible," scoffed Ford, leaning over his chair to tap at the terminal keyboard again. The photos from Gravesfield vanished and were replaced by a map of Gravity Falls, but unlike the previous map of the United States, there were no red areas. "This map is specifically tracking Bill's unique weirdness energy. Look at it. Absolutely nothing. There's no way a being that powerful and malicious could be operating here without us knowing it."
Dipper stared at the screen intently, his eyes darting back and forth across the map to find even the slightest hint of a red glow to justify his paranoia. But Ford was right, if he had indeed indexed Bill's unique weirdness signature, he was nowhere to be found in Gravity Falls. He flinched as Ford gently put a hand on his shoulder.
"Can I ask you a question, Dipper?" asked Ford, and Dipper nodded immediately in response. "As long as I've known you, you've been prone to overthinking and worrying. Has that gotten worse since this summer?"
Reflexively, Dipper wanted to push back against Ford's question. Dismissing his concerns as 'overthinking' was condescending. Insulting even.
'Wow,' thought Dipper darkly, a hot wave of shame rippling down his body, 'Real nice of Ford to make me look like an idiot in front of Stan and Wendy. Sure, maybe I overthink things. But after everything that happened with Bill, this is exactly the time to overthink. Which I'm not doing right now.'
But his initial reaction passed, and as Ford's words truly sank in, he started to reflect on the months since he had left Gravity Falls. While sending postcards to Pacifica and others had given him a piece of Gravity Falls to hold onto, and having Mabel at his side certainly helped keep him sane, he couldn't deny that he spent much of his middle school day-to-day in a heightened state of anxiety. Part of this he had just dismissed as normal, and he had often explained away more intense episodes as situational. But he hadn't made the connection until just now that all those feelings might have a common root cause.
Ford took Dipper's silence as his answer, kneeling down to speak to him eye to eye. "What you experienced at the end of the summer was a traumatic event of unprecedented proportions. We all did." Ford's voice had softened, and Dipper got the feeling that he was, in his own way, attempting to lower the temperature of the conversation. "And because of the way the town leaders wanted to reset everything back the way it was with their 'Never Mind All That' nonsense, we're all dealing with these unresolved feelings just below the surface, having to pretend they're not there as we go about our daily lives."
Dipper looked back and forth between the people in front of him. Stan stared at his feet, avoiding eye contact, Wendy looked apologetically in Dipper's direction, while Ford offered Dipper his best attempt at sincere sympathy. Despite being at each other's throats moments ago, they now stood silent, indicating that Ford's words had resonated with them in some way. While Dipper hadn't given much thought to how the events of summer might have affected him, his family, and his friends, it certainly helped to put his winter break in context. Mabel was retreating back to the comfort zone of her imagination and favorite media, Pacifica was throwing herself into work and personal growth to leave who she was in the rearview mirror, and even Ford seemed driven to redeem himself by proving portal travel could be safe.
An upbeat punk rock ringtone suddenly began playing, muffled through several layers of jacket fabric. "Ugh, sorry," apologized Wendy, who briskly moved to the opposite end of the cellar in order to answer her phone. Dipper wondered momentarily how she still had cell service, given his inability to respond to Pacifica, but inferred that Ford probably handed out a WiFi password while he was still upstairs.
Looking back to Ford, he was struck by the concern and compassion in his eyes, and he started to feel foolish for assuming the worst of his great uncle. 'That's been happening more too,' he noted, his mind quickly flashing through several instances where he imagined people's intentions towards him to be far worse than they were in reality. 'Maybe there is something to this.'
"I guess I haven't really stopped to think about how living through something like Weirdmageddon would affect everyone," Dipper admitted quietly. "Or how they would ever get past it without talking out their feelings about it."
"We're bound by law not to," joked Ford with disdain. "Without any professional guidance, your brain is trying to work all this out through dreams, and that's a perfectly natural reaction, albeit a makeshift, insufficient one. Honestly, I'm a bit surprised we're not seeing more outlandish ways of working through all this nonsense."
"What? What are you talking about?"
Ford, Stan, and Dipper all turned to look across the room towards Wendy. While she originally had kept her voice low to prevent her phone conversation from distracting the rest of the group, she had begun angrily shouting back to the other person on the phone. She paced back and forth as she continued listening, letting out groans of frustration to punctuate sentences she was hearing through the call.
"Of course the Mystery Shack doesn't have a basement. You built it, you should know that. Who's been telling you it has a basement?"
Ford glanced to Stan. He attempted to keep a calm, neutral expression across his face by pursing his lips, but his widened eyes betrayed his concern. Stan frowned in response, leaning forward to focus on Wendy's end of the conversation.
"Dad, you always fall for junk like this. I don't care if it's making you angry, if you're that worked up about a Snapagram post, go outside and cut down a tree or something. I'm with friends, not talking about this anymore. Bye."
Wendy angrily pulled the phone from her ear and immediately started tapping on the screen. She looked up for a brief moment, just long enough to see everyone staring at her. "Uhh, we might have a problem."
"Wendy," began Ford, "the subterranean lab underneath the Mystery Shack was built years after Dan helped me build the original structure. Why was he asking about a basement?"
"I didn't tell him," replied Wendy, her voice halting and distracted as she continued to type on her phone. "He said he saw it on some social media group. Wait a minute, let me go to his profile, maybe that will... Oh no."
Dipper watched as Wendy's frown began to slide into a look of fear. While he often saw Wendy angry, he seldom saw her afraid, which immediately set alarm bells off in his mind. "What is it?" he asked cautiously.
In response, Wendy held out her phone to the group. Ford let out a gasp, while Stan and Dipper could only stare in horror. Filling the screen was a social media meme that had been shared by 'Manly Dan' Corduroy, with his own caption added to the top - "Anyone heard of this?" The post itself had been made by someone with a less than stellar grasp on graphic design, wrapping up patriotic imagery with flames and the unmistakable silhouette of Bill Cipher. In blocky text was written a phrase that Dipper could barely understand, let alone fully comprehend.
"ALL HAIL THE HERALD OF C"