Chapter Twenty-One: The Funeral and Further Enhancements
Despite Stan's history of flimflamming, the whole town showed up for his funeral. Only his ashes remained now. He couldn't tell them what he wanted done with his body after his death and Stan had been refusing to talk about it. He only said that he didn't want to be buried with his bionic organs. So Ford had removed them, though he wasn't sure that he could clean them well enough to reuse them. So he would probably have to dispose of them or use them as research materials.
Many of the townspeople went up on stage to say a few words about Stan. It was a sad affair and Dipper, who was trying to steel himself for the many years ahead that he would have to continually see his loved ones dying. But he could barely hold himself together. He had Wendy on one side of him, holding his right hand and Pacifica on the other side, holding his left hand. Wendy's whole family had shown up at the funeral. Her father was obviously there. Manly Dan was massive and sat in the back so that he wouldn't block anyone's vision.
Her brothers were there as well. They were all younger than her, but two of them had already grown taller than her and were starting to look more and more like her father in terms of size and bulk. They sat in the back as well while Gus sat nearer to Wendy as he had not grown as tall as the other two yet, though he probably would. Deirdre showed up as well, wearing a gown that looked like it came out of the 1920s.
The funeral lasted most of the day with various people coming up and talking about their experiences with Stan. Lazy Susan, who was walking with a cane now and wasn't as limber as she used to be went up and talked about her first meeting with Stan and how she'd been excited to have a 'man of mystery' in town. Despite Stan's history of scamming people, most of the town had good things to say about him. Finally, Gideon came up to talk about Stan. He'd grown much taller. He must have been 5'10". Not too tall, but he'd lost a lot of his baby weight.
He'd been working out too.
"Well… This is… An odd feeling. When I was a kid, I always told myself that Stan was my archenemy. I considered myself his rival… It's almost funny now. I despised him for always thwarting my plans and considered the whole Pines family my enemies by extension… With the exception of Mabel… Well… Sorry, getting off topic. I… I knew Stan wasn't young… But I never let myself think that he could really die. We never became friends. But I respect him and I… Well…" Mabel gasped. Gideon was crying.
He'd really grown up a lot from the vindictive child that he'd been into a young man who seemed to be getting things in order for himself.
"I don't know what else to say. I'll miss Stanley. Gravity Falls won't be the same without him." Gideon said, walking off the stage, holding hands with a girl with light brown hair and freckles who looked about Gideon's age.
Wendy went up next.
"You know you have a terrible boss but a good person when you see him as a grandfather-like figure before you see him as a boss. Stan has been my boss since I was 14 and I got my first job, and I honestly don't remember ever doing a single day's worth of real work." Wendy said. The crowd laughed.
"My relationship with Stan was… Strange. I don't know if he ever actually expected me to do that much work. I showed up, I manned the counter, I did some weird chores around the Shack sometimes.
"I remember one time he made us, the twins and me go up on the roof and paint the Shack sign with glitter paint so that it would attract more attention… Or the time when he made me add more 0s to the prices of the little knick-knacks around the Shack." Wendy chuckled, tears stinging her eyes.
"You know, I may have even resented him telling me what to do. But now that he's gone, I wish I had told him more just how much I cared about him." Wendy said.
"Goodbye you old codger. I hope you're scamming angels in Heaven." Wendy said, echoing Dipper's sentiments from the night Stan died.
-0-
As night fell, the people of Gravity Falls dispersed while Wendy went home with her father and brothers. She could have stayed at the Shack. She knew she was always welcome. But she wanted to spend some time at home. Pacifica didn't really want to go home. She wanted to stay with the Pines'. She had been told that it was okay if she came home. But it didn't really feel like her home anymore. She felt warmer and more welcome at the Pines' place.
Dipper sighed, going down to his room, sitting on the couch. He looked at a television that seemed brand new. He knew that Ford had been working on a television.
"Dipper. We need to talk. About Stanley. But also about your apprenticeship." Ford said gently. Dipper sighed, nodding.
"Okay. What's up?" Dipper asked.
"I want to know if you still want to be my apprentice. You don't have to be. If it hurts too much to be here without Stan, I understand." Ford said. Dipper nodded.
"No. I want to stay. This is my home here. I love it here." Dipper said. Ford nodded.
"Well, we can take some time off from you learning to mourn Stan's death obviously. I'm not sure what will become of the Mystery Shack now that Stan is gone. Maybe Soos will come take over. He has his wife and child too though. What do you think?" Ford asked.
Dipper took a long moment, just kind of staring at the wall.
"If you want to, I've kept the organs preserved well. It seems like even separated from our bodies, they've reformed fully. Well, your organs have." Ford said.
"I'm not surprised. The water has shown itself to have amazing effects." Dipper said. He was starting to wonder if the water had more effects than just regeneration and immortality.
Regeneration wouldn't help organs that had been removed from the main body, unless they were going to form into a new body.
"Have the organs started to form a new body yet?" Dipper asked.
"No. Did you believe that they would?" Ford asked, taking out a notebook, wondering if maybe Dipper had experienced something he hadn't.
"No, no. I'm just wondering how pure regeneration would have availed my organs when they were separated from my body. I'm wondering if maybe there's more to the powers granted by the hot spring than simple regeneration and immortality." Dipper said.
"What were you thinking?" Ford asked, sitting down with Dipper. Dipper paused for a long moment, forming his fingers into a triangle and resting them on his head. He went through everything that he knew he knew and then started on more of what he thought about what he knew.
"Are you familiar with Body Manipulation?" Dipper asked. Ford waved his hand.
"Sort of. I went to a planet once where a minority of the inhabitants had managed to give themselves conscious control over their body's functions. But it didn't rise to the level of what I suspect you mean by Body Manipulation." Ford said.
"Okay, well that's a start. What did these aliens do with their primitive body manipulation, if you want to call it that?" Dipper asked.
"They had similar abilities to what you have, though not quite as advanced." Ford said.
"They could control their blood flow, prevent themselves from bleeding excessively. They could fake their own deaths by making their hearts slow to a near stop. They could accelerate their healing to repair injuries. The reason that I consider their abilities to be lesser than your own is that they would require some knowledge of how the body did those things to make them happen.
"So a member of the race could theoretically slow their own aging if they knew about telomeres and how to prevent them from shortening. They could theoretically make their bones denser and their muscles denser to give themselves superior physical abilities. But they would need to have knowledge of anatomy and would also need to know where to draw the line to avoid injuring themselves.
That's why there was a small caste of scientific elites who had the power who were nearly immortal, or at least the ones I conferred with had lived for several hundred years and some of whom had unique and powerful abilities like regeneration and superior strength and endurance. But ultimately, those who had this Body Manipulation power accounted for less than 20% of the planet's population and the ones who were considered the 'scientific elite' caste accounted for less than 1% of that 20%." Ford said.
"You on the other hand, cannot as far as I know, control your own blood or healing or consciously numb yourself from pain. But your regeneration and your immortality come naturally and without any conscious effort on your part due to it being supernatural rather than biological." Ford said. Dipper was enjoying this conversation. It was stimulating for him and he was happy to be able to think about something other than Stan's recent death.
"Did they give you this power?" Dipper asked.
Ford actually laughed.
"Oh, no. In fact, they had armed guards around the laboratory where I might have gained it. They considered it a top secret of the elite and didn't share it with even the 'lower half', much less with a primitive outsider such as myself." Ford said. Dipper nodded.
"But, we can experiment more on the extent of your abilities if you want to." Ford said.
"Actually, I have some new bionics that I'd like to test out on you." Ford said.
"Really? What bionics?"
"Spinal nanotech and brain nanotech. They'll enhance your movement abilities and your brain's processing capacity. At least, that's what I designed them for. I've yet to test them on humans. When I leave Gravity Falls, I'm usually going to test bionics on primates and other animals. I've got the bionics in my laboratory right now. So far, they've been quite successful. The spinal implants have enhanced things like speed, reflexes, agility and coordination along with some other enhanced abilities." Ford said.
Dipper could tell that Ford was doing this to cope with losing his twin. For Dipper, it made sense. Stan was a big part of his life. If it hadn't been for Stan, he may never have met Wendy. He may never have met Pacifica. This was one of the best parts of his life. Gravity Falls was a small town, very unlike Piedmont. But Dipper liked the people and he liked the slower way of life. He liked Wendy's friends. They were a bit intense sometimes. But they had been some of the first friends he really had. He had never made friends very easily back in Piedmont.
He was sure that he wouldn't make friends any easier in Gravity Falls. But Wendy had been really cool to him. She'd let him hang out with her and her friends. And at first, he was sure she was just humoring him. But she became one of the best friends he had other than his sister, and now he was dating her. He was also dating Pacifica. Who would have ever thought that would happen? They had a rocky start to their relationship. Pacifica was arrogant and stuck up. But she became humbler and Dipper saw that there was a good person in her that was trying to break away from her parents.
"Sure. I'll try out your new bionics." Dipper said, going down to the basement with Ford.
"Remember, this is even more experimental than the bionic organs. If I start to see something going wrong with the nanotech, I'll remove it. You really are the first human who will ever feature my CentralTek." Ford said. Dipper smiled. CentralTek. He liked the sound of that. Soon enough, he was going to be more machine than person. But this was an interesting turn.
He laid down on the operating table, letting Ford shave his head, sighing. He liked his hair. His hair had always been extremely thick and shaggy. He had trouble getting it to behave. That was why he just hid it under a hat. Unfortunately, he had to take the hat off in public schools. It was part of the rules that nobody was allowed to wear hats, headbands, bandanas or anything on the head except for medical reasons. And untamable hair unfortunately wasn't a medical reason.
"Okay, I'm going to put you under. I'm injecting a special sedative that your nanomachines will consume and continually release so that you won't wake up in the middle of surgery." Ford said. Dipper nodded, letting himself be injected. Ford noted that Dipper had gotten stronger over the years. He didn't know exactly what exercise Dipper did, but he didn't have the same 'noodle body' that he did when he was thirteen. Ford watched as Dipper's vital signs lowered and he went to sleep. Ford started with the brain, sawing open Dipper's head, looking at his brain.
He isolated several sections, injecting various nanotech devices, finally closing up his head, watching it seal up. Ford couldn't resist a bit of jealousy at Dipper's drastically enhanced healing. On the one hand, he knew that he was too old to be immortal. His time was coming to a close and he already had his time extended by the bionics. He didn't know exactly how long he had left, but he figured it wasn't more than thirty more years. He was already starting to feel his age. He'd be turning 67 soon. Immortality would be too much of a burden for him.
He opened up Dipper's back, looking at his spine. This would be a bit more difficult. It was a highly delicate procedure to inject anything into the spinal cord. He looked at the places in the spine where he would have to inject. First, he put on new gloves and then began to work, injecting the first nanotech directly between his spinal cord and his brain stem, moving down and injecting the rest. It took almost an hour before he let Dipper's body heal itself up.
-0-
Almost an hour later, Dipper woke up, groaning in discomfort. It felt weird.
"Don't worry. You'll get used to it quickly. The gorillas and other primates did." Ford said. Dipper sat up, moving around.
"So, what exactly do these new bionics entail?" Dipper asked. Ford smiled.
"I'm glad you asked. Well, naturally, your dynamic abilities will be enhanced.
"In other words, you'll be more agile, dexterous, accurate, better balanced, more coordinated, more mobile. There will be other things that you'll discover over time. And I've never performed this experiment on a human. But the primates that I performed it on displayed much greater intelligence and adroitness when tested. So there's every chance that you will as well." Ford said.
"Dipper, I'm getting older. I don't know exactly how long I'll live, but one day, I'll want you to take over where I've left off.
"I have faith that you'll be a strong inheritor of my work." Ford said.
"And this, these bionics, the knowledge I pass on to you, are all just ways I'm helping you to have all the knowledge you need to begin your work from where mine stopped." Ford said.
"Already, you've made some discoveries that I looked my whole life and never found. A hot spring that grants immortality and possibly conscious control over your body. A supernatural race native to these woods." Ford said.
"I have total faith in you, Dipper." Ford said. Dipper nodded, hugging Ford tightly.