Chapter 2

Maddie wiped her hair from her face, the sweat clinging everything to her as she worked in the garage. She pulled down her goggles to cover her eyes as she started to solder a wire into place, hoping she had an idea of how to get Jack and Danny home. She didn't fully care if she managed to bring back the house, she just wanted her boys back.

She sat down the tool on the old workbench and looked up at an old analog clock they kept on the wall since moving in. It read after seven, getting her to look out the window and see the sun had set. She had asked that Sam take Jazz home, knowing her son had never been to the girl's house but this was a bit of an emergency and she didn't feel right asking Angela to house Jazz, Tucker being a boy just entering puberty now.

Maddie's stomach let out a growl, reminding her she had missed lunch already and should eat something. Knowing she needed to keep up her strength, she pulled her hood back off and stepped over to the old corded phone they kept in here for emergencies. Picking it up, she punched in the pizza joint's number, surprising herself at how well she remembered the number, and waited through the rings.

"Joe's Pool Hall and Pizzeria, how can I help you?" a young male voice asked with a voice crack.

"Is this Ricky?" Maddie asked, knowing the teen's voice well. "It's Maddie Fenton."

"Mrs. F!" Ricky exclaimed. "What happened to Fenton Works? I keep hearing something's blown up or something."

"The house is gone but I'm working on it,' Maddie admitted, not surprised the town was talking. "Can you send over a Joe's Special? Tell the delivery person to bring it to the garage."

"Just the one?" Ricky asked.

"Just me tonight," Maddie admitted, giving a glance to the garage that was mostly used as storage.

"Okay, it'll be on your way in about half an hour."

"Can you add a can of Boyal?" Maddie asked, hoping to catch him before he hung up. "I know you don't normally deliver small drinks."

"Nothing in your back up fridge?" Ricky asked with a laugh.

"Nothing drinkable," Maddie admitted, recalling most of what was in the old fridge was old ecto-samples.

"It's on the house," Ricky offered. "Take care, Mrs. F."

"Thanks, Ricky." Maddie heard the line go dead, getting her to hang up. She looked back at the clock and told herself she'd take a break once the food got there. Propping open the door to help with air flow, she went back to the dimension detector she was trying to build with what she had in the garage. She reminded herself why most of the things had been put in the garage in the first place, either because the device didn't work or because it had exploded. In retrospect, she figured the two were just two sides of the same coin.

"Mom? Mom, can you hear me?" a deeper version of Danny's voice called out, his voice under static.

Maddie jumped at the sound of his voice and looked around, trying to find the cause of it.

"Tuck, just a little more," Danny's deeper voice said. "I think I heard her. Mom! Over here!"

Maddie turned to an old battery powered TV and saw a black haired man sitting down in a lab. His hair was cut short and he looked to be in his late twenties, but Maddie knew it was her son. "Danny? Where are you? Is your father with you?"

The picture cleared up, giving Maddie a clear view into the lab with technology she was unfamiliar with but could easily find the familiar flaming F that signified it to be Fenton Work tech. "Where are you?" Maddie asked again.

"Mom, I have to be careful about what I'm saying," Danny started with, rubbing the back of his neck. He looked beyond the camera as a woman's voice carried to the mike but not enough for Maddie to understand the words. "Wait, you knew about the twins?" Danny asked the woman. She said something else, getting Danny to nod his head and look back at the camera. "Mom, I'm not the boy that just went missing. I'm thirty-six years old. We're calling you from your future lab."

"How?" Maddie asked. "This old TV doesn't have a camera."

"But it does have a mike for recording," Danny pointed out, getting her to look at the top where a small hole was with a microphone logo beside it. She looked back at Danny as he continued, "You and Jazz got home to find the house missing, right?"

Maddie nodded her head before realizing he couldn't see her. "Yeah. A few hours ago."

"I'm gonna tell you something you cannot tell anyone else," Danny prefixed with. "My kids are also there."

"Your kids?" Maddie echoed, putting a hand to her chest as she looked down.

"Misty and Jackson," Danny said, continuing.

"Hold on, Danny, give her a moment," the unrecognizable woman voice said.

Maddie looked back at the screen as her brain tried to register who that voice belonged to. "I'm with you, aren't I?" she asked in a shaky voice.

"Yeah, because Fenton Works got blown up a bit when Dad created the backfire," Danny explained. "If it sounded half as loud there as it did here, I have no idea how I slept through it the first time." He shook his head before continuing. "But Mom, we're running out of time. The twins have a strange anomaly about them. They have an ectoplasm overabundance in their bodies. That's just how they were born."

"An overabundance?" Maddie echoed. Her brows furled as possibilities ran through her head. "Where they conceived close to the portal? Or was your wife in Fenton Works during that spell?"

"I mean, I guess yes to both of those," Danny said, his cheeks going red as Tucker's laugh could be heard off camera. "I mean, you and Dad live next door since shortly after I got married, so we could take over Fenton Works. Anyway-" he said, waving away the tangent, "they've all been sent to a universe that doesn't have ectoplasm."

"A universe- you mean they've been sent to a parallel dimension?" Maddie asked, secretly proud she was on the right track. "How is a universe without ectoplasm even plausible?"

"There's theories out there about how," Danny tried. "I looked into it a little after we got back but all I remember is the branch off from our world and it must have happened during creation. So much of our world is bound by ecto-science, but that means for the twins it's deadly to be there for long. Without a normal supply of ectoplasm, that here we get without thinking about, they'll die."

"What can I do?" Maddie asked. "I've been working on a device to follow the portal's ecto-signature, but I hadn't finished it yet."

"Maddie, I won't get on camera for fear of what seeing me might do," the older Madeline said. "I'm gonna continue the time loop we'll be forever stuck in of passing on this information, leaving you twenty years to figure out how this works so you can pass it on."

"There's no way to prevent this from happening in the first place?" Maddie asked.

"No, the Maddie before me warned she had tried," Madeline offered with a laugh. "I'm starting to believe that thought loops on every other of us. I saw the outcome of trying but you didn't so you will try and show the outcome to the one after you. I'm gonna get Tucker to send you the schematic through this old TV so you can copy it down. We'll be here to help for as long as the connection is strong."

Maddie quickly grabbed a pencil and notebook, opening it to the next free page as the image of older Danny was taken over by a black and white blue print of a foldable box-like contraption.

"This is the dimension grabber," Madeline informed as Maddie copied what she saw. "Once built, you'll put it in the hole that was the basement and activate it. You'll have to get out of the way fast once you do, though."

"And this thing works?" Maddie asked, looking up to make sure she was drawing the circuit right.

"Even in the other timeline, it works," Danny said, more to himself.

Maddie gave the TV a glance, wanting to ask about what her son meant, but held her tongue and continued drawing out the circuit board inside the box she was to make.