Haven Days
(Late summer, 2020)
15-Holy Matrignomey
Things returned more or less to abnormal over the next few days. Fiddleford and Ford vanished into the laboratory rooms in the old Northwest Mansion, working on a modification of Fiddleford's emergency vaccine for COVERT-19. There were two huge problems: First, Fiddleford had a dread of the organic nano-machines somehow malfunctioning and mutating—perhaps even mutating the patient. Second, if the vaccine was to become effective, it couldn't just defuse the virus. It would have to train the immune systems of the patients to do that job.
"I reckon we hafta tackle th' mutation problem first," Fiddleford said. "I wouldn't want no remedy of mine to start poppin' out dang superheroes an' villains."
"At least," Ford said, shutting off the stream of reports from Agents all over the world, "no sign of the Rift particle is showing up anywhere. And the mortality rate has improved significantly. Now, here's the map of the virus surface at molecular scale—"
Days of hard work, and, as far as the two friends were concerned, of nonstop fun.
Meanwhile, one morning a worried Mabel consulted with Wendy and Dipper up on Lookout Point, a wonderful place to view the Valley, especially when the sun was coming up. "What's so secret, Sis?" Dipper asked.
"Well," Mabel said, "Teek and his family and I have been negotiating about the wedding." She took a deep breath. "Dipper, don't take this the wrong way, but, um, Teek wants his brother Brendan to be his best man, not, um, you. Not because he doesn't like you, but—"
"That's not a problem," Dipper said, smiling. "I understand. I didn't even know that Teek had a brother!"
Mabel shrugged. "Well, yeah, his family's Irish, you know. Teek's the youngest. His brother Brendan is ten years older than he was, and his sister Maeve is twelve years older than Teek."
"So I guess when the O'Gradys moved to Gravity Falls, the older sibs were out on their own, huh?" said Wendy.
"Yeah. That's it. Brendan was just finishing college, and Maeve was married already. She and her husband live in Belfast, or around there. That's in Ireland. Oh, Wendy, I still want you to be my Matron of Honor."
"I'd be honored," Wendy said.
"And Dad's gonna give me away. Ugh. That sounds so possessive—"
"Dad will present you," Dipper suggested. "Or escort you, whatever you want to call it. Doesn't have to be giving away."
"But, Dip, I want you to be in the wedding party, too. How about being a groomsman? It's like a bridesmaid, except for the groom and not the bride."
"Sure," Dipper said. "Mabel, why are you so antsy about this?"
"I don't knowwww," she said, looking out at the scenery. "I just—well, you know his family's Catholic, but they don't mind that I'm not, but it's sort of awkward. And I don't want to convert, because that would make me feel like some kind of hypocrite or something, and Teek's fine with that, but I don't know how the rest of Teek's family, his brother and sister and all, will take it."
"I'm sure it'll be cool," Wendy said. "As long as Teek and you are happy, the family will have to accept everything."
"Thanks," Mabel sniffled. "Anyway, we won't have a priest, this is gonna be a civil ceremony, and I've asked Grunkle Stan to do it, 'cause he's a justice of the peace and all, but Grenda can't be here because of COVERT restrictions, and Candy and Pacifica will be my bridesmaids, but I'm afraid I'll make Pacifica feel bad 'cause her fiancé broke off with her—"
"What?" Wendy asked. "I didn't know that!"
"Yeah, his dad's a state senator, and he's real 'Oh this is just the flu, nobody needs to get vaccinated,' and Pacifica's guy is like that too, but Mr. Northwest nearly died of it, and it's just a mess, and her boyfriend blew up and she broke it off, and now she's kind of a mess, but—you know, I feel guilty getting married in the middle of all this, but on the other hand, I love Teek and I do want to get married—am I just babbling now?"
Gently, Dipper said, "I think the problem is that we don't talk to each other as much as we used to." He opened the console and handed Mabel a small box of tissues. "Here you go."
With a happy-sad smile, Mabel quoted, "To wipe your eyes. To wipe any part of your face that feels moist. Remember that?"
"From My Fair Lady, back in high school," Dipper said as Mabel honked her nose. "That's what Higgins said to you when he gave you his handkerchief."
"I miss being twelve," Mabel said.
"Told you," Wendy said, but in a warm, teasing voice. "High school is the worst. You guys are lucky that you had activities that were fun. Track and acting and art." She sighed. "But being twelve, man—back before all this pandemic craziness. I'll have a talk with Pacifica and see if I can offer her any advice. I broke up with tons of guys, so maybe I can help her deal with it. And if the guy doesn't care that her dad was so sick, forget him! So come on, Mabes, let it all out. Talk. Let's make wedding plans!"
For Jeff and Gemula, his sweetheart (he had finally managed to get up the nerve to court real Gnome girls, not squirrels), wedding plans were quite simple. As tradition held, they would pledge vows in the home of Jeff's mother—his dad had died decades before in an unfortunate bear incident. Then they would spend the wedding night in the guest room of Gemula's parents. And then they would move into Jeff's home and set about expanding and improving it for the family they would one day have.
Wedding rings were not really part of the Gnomes' marriage tradition, though it was not unusual for them to exchange tokens of jewelry. However, Gnomes had been adapting for years now, and human beliefs and customs had rubbed off on them. Jeff had given Gemula a sweet engagement ring—his friends the metalworkers had crafted it, and though the crystals in it were much smaller than the flashy ones they had done when they'd believe they would all marry Mabel to make her Queen, they were attractive.
Well, nowadays the Gnomes did not have a Queen. After the badger-queen had passed on, they'd worked out a kind of constitutional democracy, with Jeff as prime minister and a small cabinet of advisor ministers—Minister of Food, Minister of Business, and so on. Elections were direct, with all Civilized Gnomes (also known as Gnomes of the Forest) who were forty or more years old having a vote.
Tallying was difficult. At first, everyGnome had to gather in one spot and vote by holding up a hand. Back then, few Gnomes could count past twenty, and eventually every larger number became "one thousand," even if that signified a hundred and four. Then a formerly feral Gnome who was as odd a freak to the Gnomes as the twelve-fingered Ford was to humans, Winzinger, had returned to Civilized Gnome society from the banking system of the Crawl Space. Winzinger was brilliant with numbers, and he had taught a whole cadre of younger Gnomes the basics of arithmetic.
This had two advantages. First, they could now confidently count votes in elections. Second, they could also make sure that in their business operations (chiefly waste disposal and pest control, though they had developed a modest banking system and had stock investments now as well) they were never cheated.
As Jeff had reported to Ford, as far as they could tell, their species was immune to COVERT-19. "We don't know why," Jeff said. "Maybe it's because our biology's just different from humans'. Or maybe it's because Gnomes just don't interact with humans except here in Gravity Falls, and you guys have done a great job keeping the disease out."
Anyway, Jeff had come to ask Ford for Mabel's and Dipper's and Wendy's hands. "Not that I want to marry them," he explained. "Just that when Gemula and I get, you know, bonded, we'd like human representatives to be there for the handing ceremony. Uh, there's no way they could fit inside my mom's house, but there's a ceremony right after the vows where the couple meets the Gnomes in the sacred clearing, and they announce their marriage. Everyone raises their hands to show they wish the couple happiness. We'd like for them to be there for that, the first humans ever at a handing. With your permission, of course."
Ford chuckled. "In our society," he said, "they're all adults now. They don't need my permission or their parents', but it's considerate of you to ask. You and Gemula come to the Mystery Shack for dinner one day this week, and Mr. and Mrs. Pines and Manly Dan and his wife Ruby will be there. That way you can invite Dipper, Wendy, and Mabel. I'm sure they'll agree to come to your wedding."
"What day?" Jeff asked.
They consulted Lorena, settled on a time, and Jeff left. "Dear," Lorena said, "what exactly do Gnomes like to eat?"
For that one they had to call Dipper. "Pretty much anything that humans eat," he said. "Best bet is to go vegetarian. I know they like pretty much all green vegetables, all fruit, and they absolutely love fresh-baked bread. And if you want them to be your friends forever, include a big bowl of washed, raw mushrooms."
"I can work with that," Lorena said.
Not long after that, Jeff came around to give them their formal invitation. "Sure, we'd love to "Mavhon sunsink," Jeff said. "Um, that's . . . sunset . . . wait, I know this, the humans call . . . it's when the dark and the day are the same length—"
"Equinox," Dipper said. "It's usually about September 21. We'll check the calendar to be sure and we'll double-check with Winzinger."
"He'll know," Jeff said. "It's in about five weeks. Anyway, if you both can come, I'll tell you what the ceremony is and what you'll need to do. And thank you. This will mark a special time in Gnome history."
And as Jeff was leaving, Dipper said, "Oh, Leikh l'solis n'an ren-nakhan do featha a l'onath!"
Jeff gasped, then removed his conical red hat, clasped it to his chest, and bowed almost low enough to tap the floor with his forehead. Then, in a happy, tight voice, as though overwhelmed with joy, he managed, "Thank you so much! I—thank you!"
When he was gone, Wendy took Dipper's hand and thought to him, —What the heck was that, dude? We didn't learn that in college!
It's as close as I can come to the Gnomes' traditional marriage blessing. Roughly, it says, "May starlight fill your life-bond always."
—And how did you pick that up?
Well, the Gnomes have a written language—they use a form of runes—but there's been a drift in pronunciation over the centuries, and now only a few Gnomes can read the most ancient inscriptions. Winzinger wanted to create a Gnome-English dictionary to sort of stabilize everything. They need it now they have so many business dealings with humans. So I've been helping him with it. We email each other—
—Now that's a first! Gnomes and computers, man!
Winzinger isn't the typical Gnome. Anyway, we started with proverbs and traditional phrases, and so on. That happened to be one of them. Winzinger says I've got a thick Human accent, but evidently at least Jeff could understand me.
Wendy gave him a long, deep kiss. "Mm," she said. "I always love it when I discover hidden depths in my husband!"
Right around the first of August, Ford and Fiddleford sat in the darkened lab and stared at a holographic projection showing an image of the complex COVERT-19 virus. It looked like a bizarre alien planet, or maybe asteroid. Rendered from a scanning electron microscopic visual atlas the virus, this hologram had been assembled from mutable original two-D pictures.
The color wasn't technically true but served to show the different proteins that made up the viral surface, along with the physical features.
So basically the main body of the virus appeared as a yellow sphere with scatters of pink and blue and green domes, interspersed with what looked like slender-stemmed red-capped mushrooms all over. "Those are the spikes," Fiddleford said. "The short-term vaccine blunts them, sorta, so they can't latch onto human cells."
"So instead of attacking the spikes, you're saying we should deal with the surface proteins," Ford said. "I understand."
"Now, I don't know how t'pull it off, understand, but this animation is what I programmed t' show off what-all I'm hoping the new nanites might be able to do. Here we go."
Fiddleford activated the program. A stream of neon-green particles appeared, orbited the virus, and then spiraled to the surface. They seemed to be attracted to the pale pink domes and clustered there.
"What's this stage?" Ford asked.
"Th' nanites are attachin' to the anchor protein," Fiddleford said. "Now iffen things go right, this should happen."
The image of the virus vibrated as the green nanite particles burrowed into the domes, and then the domes began to shatter. When more than half had broken, the virus itself fell apart and faded to a dull gray, the green neon particles puffing out of existence.
"I see," Ford said. "They're self-limiting. But what if the nanites resist the termination?"
"They can't" Fiddleford said. "I've done figgered out three different back-ups to make shore they can't sustain after doin' their jobs."
"Is that—"
"Not gonna try to create the nanomajiggers 'til I got another ninety-seven backups," Fiddleford said. "We can't let this turn into an Australia scenario. You know, import three-four rabbits, get overwhelmed with 'em, import foxes, get overwhelmed by them, et cetera ad infinitum."
"That's going to take time," Ford said.
"I'm a-hopin' I can get the nanovaccine into production by November. Then iffen we can persuade th' public to take it, well—we gotta hit seventy-five per cent to reduce the viral presence worldwide to remove it as a threat."
"Maybe we can do it," Ford said. "The pharmacological labs are also researching vaccines. Together with them, we—well."
"We can hope," Fiddleford said, switching off the computer. "We can only hope."