Haven Days
(June 2020)
8-Subcritical Mass
Startled, Ford took a step back, nearly stumbling because he was wearing his old sloppy bedroom slippers. He recovered in time and blurted, "Bill!"
With a blink, the slitted yellow eye became blue and normal. "It's me, Dr. Pines, Billy. But, uh, the other part of me needs to speak to you. It's urgent. He's not mad at you, honest, and he won't hurt anybody."
Ford tightened the belt of his maroon robe and sank into an armchair, his hair ruffled, no glasses on his eyes, and his rumpled pajama legs showing between the robe and the old mouse-gray slippers. "It—it was quite a shock," he said, his voice unsteady. He rubbed a hand over his eyes and down to his stubbly chin. "Very well. I'll speak to Bill Cipher."
Another blink, and the yellow eye was back. "Good man, Fordsy. Hey, I'm not gonna begin with apologizing, because a spoken apology's not worth the paper it's not written on. But, uh, in the Mindscape I just got called onto the carpet by old Frilly. Confidentially, it could use a good vacuuming."
"Old—do you mean the Axolotl?" asked Ford.
"Yeah, the guy who granted me a second chance when I did my last chants. But I digress—"
Wearily, Ford said, "Bill, please, no banter. Billy says I should trust you. That's hard for me. But I'll try. Straight talk, please. What's the matter? What's urgent?"
Billy took a deep breath, and then in the Cipher voice he said, "Right, right, I'm still learning to be human, sorry. Whoops, said no apology. No backsies, though." Another long breath. "OK, Fordsy, you and McGucket have a hard job to do. You know this virus isn't all the same virus, right?"
Frowning, Ford replied, "I know that a very small percentage of the affected people suffer from dimensional instability."
"Bingo! Wanna know why? I'm gonna try to conjure up a picture here, old friend. It's not real, it's just an unholygram. Sheesh, I'm starting to think I'll never get my sense of humor back. Hang on, this is really hard for me in Billy's body. Gotta concentrate."
Billy held up his hands, spread about a foot and a half apart, palms perpendicular to the floor. An orange-red cloud appeared between them, swirled, and then condensed into the shape of a jagged X. With a gasp, Billy asked, "See it?"
"The Rift!" Ford said. "I remember it all too well, Cipher."
"I'm gonna—ugh—let it go. Let it go, let it go, I called it up just for show—gah!" Billy snapped his fingers on both hands, and the vision vanished. "That . . . takes it . . . out of this puny human body. Don't get me wrong, puny's better than oblivion. Yeah, Sixer, that was the hole between reality and the Nightmare Realm. But it's also a maximum of a particle that's the minimum, and that subatomic piece of danger's what's infecting the virus that's infecting people. Get it?"
"I'm . . . not certain," Ford said. "The particle, as you call it, has the power to open portals between dimensions? Is that your point?"
"No, my point used to be under my hat. But basically, yeah, it's kind of like a quirky quarky thing. Now, listen: The viruses began to be infected in one particular spot not in China, but in Japan. And this is good news. Uh, not-bad news. The Rifticles—you don't mind if I name the dimension particles that, do you? Good. The Rifticles are coming through, maybe from the Nightmare Realm, at that particular particle-ular spot still. The viruses can't spread it among themselves. But a person sick with the COVERT-19 virus can absorb one of the Rifticles and it can penetrate one single virus inside the person. If that Rifticle activates when the person is not long for this world, it can rip his mind right into the Mindscape, and that can have serious effects."
"We know that much already," Ford said. "Well, we've surmised it, at any rate. But what can we do about it?"
"Long shot," Bill said. "But theoretically feasible, as McGucket will tell you. By the way, better not tell him where this came from. When he got pulled into the Nightmare Realm for a few seconds, it done scramblified his brains."
"You have a lot to make up for," Ford said heavily. "My poor friend—but wait, wait, what's the long shot? How can we deal with this?"
"Hang on," Bill said, closing his eye and falling silent for a few seconds. "Ah. Sorry, it's taking a lot of energy. Make sure the kid gets lots of rest today, OK? The thing about the Rifticles is that once they're bound to the virus, they're trapped until the person infected with that one virus dies. Then they're free unless they can quickly exit the body and find another COVERT-19 virus to latch onto. Now, here's the bad news: Rifticle calls to Rifticle. These things want to emerge, converge, and merge. They want to build up a new Rift."
"Surely they're not conscious," objected Ford.
"Look, I'm creating a metaphor here. Basically, if a certain critical mass of these thingies blends together, you've got a new Rift on your hands. But, aha, since they have a natural attraction to merge—think of them is iron filings near a magnet, they all want to get to the poles, right? Since they're like that, I'm pretty sure if you build a trap they will come. From all points on the Earth, that's the point. What I'm saying—well, if you build it, they'll come to it. All of them. You also have to take care of the generating point in Japan, but that's not so hard. One person with a hazard suit and an ultra-magnotronic containment vessel could do that. It's not very big, about yay by yay." Billy indicated something only about four inches in diameter. "You'll need two containment units, the other for all the Rifticles that get drawn into the trap."
"And then what?" Ford asked.
"I think if you bombard them with contramatter energy, it'll force them to pop back into the Omega dimension. That's nonexistence—kind of the solitary cell of the Multiverse. No . . . coming back from . . . sorry, Fordsy . . .."
Billy sagged to his knees and Ford, leaping from the chair, barely caught him before he fell. He cautiously lifted the boy's good eyelid. Billy was Billy again.
"Damn," Ford said under his breath. Bill Cipher had just confirmed a lot of what he and McGucket had already guessed. But—how did Bill know about McGucket's theoretical concept of contra-matter, matter that is the opposite of both matter and antimatter? The ultra- magnotronic vessel wasn't too hard, Ford could design that—the quantum destabilizers had a lining that had that property. But a contra-matter beam, how long would it take to create a generator for that?
Well—on the bright side, if there was one, knowing McGucket's handiness with technology, if it could be done at all, he should be able to pull it off in twenty-two minutes or so.
Ford lifted Billy up and laid him on the sofa. The boy's face showed lines of strain. Wondering if he should even trust the message, Ford never the less went up to the linen closet and brought down a blanket and a pillow. He covered Billy and glanced at the clock. Four-fifty-four in the morning. He went back to the bedroom. Lorena seemed to be sleeping again, so he just retrieved his computer phone—also known as a cell phone—from its bedside charging stand and then returned to the parlor.
With twelve fingers, it was more awkward for him to send a text than it would have been for a normal middle-aged man, and Lord knows it's hard enough for them. He knew that McGucket always checked his texts and e-mails first thing in the morning, so he'd get this when he woke up, in about an hour:
Fiddleford, urgent we confer soonest. Come to the house. Tell Billy's parents he is OK and is visiting
Ford hesitated, then completed the text:
the Mystery Shack. Will explain when you get here. Might be a chance to resolve the dimensional problem, more when I see you. Ford
That done, Ford went to the kitchen and found an orange in the fridge. He peeled and sectioned it, put on a carafe of coffee, and when it had brewed, he took a cup and a small plate with the orange on it back to the parlor. He had turned out the lights, but some from the hall seeped in. Ford sat in the armchair, had his breakfast, and watched over Billy, wondering who the boy would be when he woke again.
A few hours later Mabel woke up, got out of bed, showered, and dressed. Her wallet lay on the bedside table. She picked it up and on impulse glanced inside: A twenty, two tens, two fives, and four ones. "I'm rich," she told herself.
Not that it mattered. For the duration, people in Gravity Falls weren't using U.S. currency, but . . . Stanbucks. At last there was a use for Stanbucks.
As Mayor, Stan had realized that isolating the Falls from the rest of the world would inevitably call for unusual steps. One was how people would make their livings. Oh, they could still work, if they worked in town or in the Valley. Manly Dan could still build things and log, for example. Steve at the auto shop could still repair cars. But the supply of moolah in the Valley was finite, and what would someone whose job had vanished together with access to the outside world do when no income came in?
So . . . Stanbucks. They were easy to manufacture, cheap to produce, and because of an idea of Mabel's nobody could counterfeit them. Each Stanbuck note had a circle on the back, and each circle had Stan's right thumbprint impressed on it in a special ink. But the thing is, the Council, with Stan's persuasion, had authorized the bills as legal tender until such time the quarantine ended. And as Mayor, Stan had arranged for everybody in the Valley to receive an allowance of a thousand Stanbucks a month.
People could buy the necessities, much of the food locally grown, much of the other stuff imported from outside the Valley.
Ay-yi-yi, the outside suppliers would not accept Stanbucks. They had no vision.
But . . . Ford's Agency had a phenomenal bankroll of funds from the lucrative patents it owned. Stan himself had roughly a million and a half bucks that could be transferred. They'd leaned on the other richest inhabitants of the Valley to contribute to a community chest. Stan calculated that, if they were careful, the citizens of Gravity Falls could be supplied for two full years before another infusion of funds for trade would be necessary.
Meanwhile, if people wanted, they could still buy things with U.S. currency. Or order them from outside the Valley, except the goods would have to be processed through the sterilization faculty before being delivered, meaning a delay of at least one day.
Anyhow, Mabel had some money available, still more in Stanbucks, and she felt good. Only—well, the news certainly depressed her. She'd learned from a few of her college friends that the disease was hitting harder than ever. A guy who had been in the production of Avenue Q with her texted that he and his whole family had been terribly sick, and his grandmother had died. Dipper's old flame Eloise had gone home to Minnesota and within two weeks had to go to the hospital, though she was out now and mending. But so many people—too many.
Composing herself, Mabel put on her happy face and let the dogs out. The dogs went to greet the pigs, who came grunting over to have their ears scratched. Inside, Dipper and Wendy had breakfast ready—well, they had scrambled eggs, sourdough toast, and turkey sausages, anyhow—and Mabel joined them.
"Any more eggs?" she asked.
"Plenty—in the fridge," Dipper said.
"Aw, I wanted to be waited on hand and foot."
"Use your own hands, Mabes," Wendy advised.
"There's still four sausage links though," Dipper said. "You might want to warm them up."
Mabel scrambled two eggs, and when they were mostly done she popped the toast down and put the sausage links in to re-heat. "Any OJ?"
"In the pitcher," Dipper said. "Don't drink all of it, though. Leave some for Little Soos and Harmony."
"There's a quart," Mabel said from the fridge door. "I'll just have one glass."
She sat down and dived into her food. "What's on the agenda today?" she asked with her mouth full.
"Not much," Dipper said. "I think I'm gonna be done with my next book manuscript by this evening."
"I'm gonna go visit my dad and stepmom," Wendy said. "Want to come with?"
"Sure!" Mabel said. "I like Ruby! She's so—" Mabel made her voice strong: "Form up, maggots! You've got fifteen minutes to get those rooms picked up and clean! Go, go, go!"
"That's her," Wendy said with a grin. Her stepmom had been a U.S. Marine. "She's done wonders for my brothers."
"Yeah, let's have her take a look at Dipdop," Mabel said. "He could stand a little improvement."
"So could you!" Dipper said.
"Me? Nah, I'm great. Who's gonna wash dishes?"
"I'll wash, you dry," Dipper said, getting up. He asked Wendy, "Want another cup of coffee?"
"Yeah, half a cup, thanks."
"I got it," Mabel said, rising and getting Wendy's cup. She poured roughly half a cup of coffee into it and then a full one for herself. Wendy took only about a tablespoon of cream in hers, but Mabel made hers very pale and stirred in a couple of spoonfuls of sugar.
Dipper was at the sink, filling it with the cups and glasses and silverware before tackling the greasier pan and spatula. "I thought you were gonna dry!"
"I can multitask," Mabel said. She took sips from her cup in between drying dishes. "Do you guys miss college?"
"Yeah," Dipper said. "I kind of—you know—worry about people out there."
"Me, too," Wendy said. She finished her half cup of coffee and brought the empty question-mark mug over to the sink for Dipper to wash. "And I had a great time at WAU. The forestry faculty and students—they were great people." She made a face. "And by now I should have a job in the industry or with the Government. But nobody's hiring, so I guess I'll just have to roam the woods in the Valley."
Mabel said, "Here, this is the last," as she handed the egg pan to Dipper. He started to wash it.
"Gonna haul out for Casa Corduroy in half an hour," Wendy said. "Better go brush your teeth. Oh—have you fed the dogs?"
"Dogs no, pigs yes. Dip, can you take care of Tripper and DC—?"
The gift-shop door opened, and Dipper, who had just rinsed the frying pan, glanced at Wendy. "Who in the world?"
He stepped to the hallway and into the shop, and he saw Grunkle Ford stabbing the code into the vending machine. It swiveled open.
"Hi," Dipper said.
Ford jumped as if startled. "Oh, it's you, Mason. Uh, hello. I'm going to my lab—wait, do you want to come with me?"
"Uh—I guess," Dipper said. "What's up?"
"Something very big," Ford said. Then he paused and added, "I hope."