A/N: And a new month begins with a new chapter!
Northgalus2002: One thing I will reveal about Mr A is that his access to the prisoners isn't always stable; he operates strictly behind the scenes, well out of the spotlight to avoid getting rumbled by Bill. As such, he's limited as to when he can get a message to the others: he has to wait until Bill starts getting bored and drifts off to think of something new to torture his captives with. Plus, Mr A finds it easier to contact people who are trapped at a fixed address - hence why Pacifica and Gideon were the first to get letters. Unfortunately, this approach doesn't always work... (ominous music, maniacal laughter) hope you enjoy the chapter!
Fantasy Fan 223: Yeah, this is chapter is going to be a pretty miserable experience for Fiddleford. And I hate to say it, Bill hasn't even started yet. I love the guesses on who Mr A really is - I can't confirm any of them yet, alas, but I love your reviews and your speculation! Thanks again!
Kraven The Hunter: I imagine that Arlene Gleeful lost the vacuum cleaner a few hundred miles back; now, it only exists as a mental construct for her to cling to as her anxiety worsens. And as interesting as it would be to turn Gideon into a murderer, he wouldn't exactly be uncomfortable with this new direction to his life, for he's always had a psychopathic streak, after all. In this story, Bill generally wants one of two things for his captives, depending on how amusing or how annoying he finds them: he either wants to drag them down to his level and corrupt them until they're essentially proto-Henchmaniacs, or he just wants to make their lives a living hell. Gideon disappointed him, betrayed him and helped the attempt to overthrow his rule, so Bill isn't interested in making Gideon any worse - just in torturing him to madness. As for what's in store for Fiddleford... well, just wait and see! Thanks for your review.
Guest: I so desperately want to review Mr A's true identity... but I'll have to be patient. For now, all I can say is that I love the speculation - thanks again for reviewing.
Allotrios: Thanks for your review; sadly, you'll have to wait a while for the big reveal, but speculation is always welcome until then!
Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter. Feel free to furnish this sad old narcissist of an author with your theories, speculation, recommendations, glowing praise, shrieking confusion, angry questions, lovely long reviews and all manner of critiques and criticism - especially for those typos that creep in so very late at night. Read, review, and above all, enjoy!
Disclaimer: I do not own Gravity Falls. It's too intangible to be grasped.
The Rust set in soon after he arrived.
Fiddleford wasn't sure why he called it that; his short-term memories were becoming hazy and ill-defined just by staying here in this mad, indescribable place. But it felt right to call it the Rust, because the more he lost to it, the more it felt like parts of his brain were slowly corroding.
It was a process of forgetting, yes, but it wasn't like the memory gun's instantaneous erasure of unwanted recollections. No, whatever was happening to his mind, it was much slower than the gun and much more unpleasant than even its long-term side-effects: the gun had left him too demented to realize just how much he'd lost until Dipper and Mabel had showed him, but the Rust left him fully aware of the slow decay going on inside his skull.
Fortunately, it didn't appear to be branching out to other parts of his brain: he seemed as sane as ever, his motor skills hadn't deteriorated, and his grasp of logic was perfectly intact. Even his grasp of physics and engineering didn't seem affected. But short-term memories were fading every day, and tiny holes were already starting to appear in long-term recollections: people, places, events, all but the most deeply-ingrained experiences were slowly rusting away into inert thought-stuff.
So, he'd given himself a mantra, a means of refreshing the memories he still possessed, all carefully written down in the notebook he kept strapped to his left leg.
My name is Fiddleford Hadron McGucket, and I can still remember who I am.
The mantra always began the same way – had to begin the same way: the name gave him a starting point, a road to walk, a thread to follow into the echoing corridors of his tired old brain. Without the name, he had nothing to work with, just cobwebs, dust and so many disconnected old thoughts with no frame of reference or context, like scenes from a thousand different unrelated movies hastily collaged together – snapshots from someone else's life. On those terrible mornings when he found himself awaking breathless from nightmares and clawing at the walls in a desperate attempt to get a grip on reality, he needed to remember his name first and foremost, because otherwise his mind was nothing but panic and emptiness.
And he had to remind himself that he could still remember, because he could: he hadn't erased his memories this time; he wasn't suffering the effects of the memory gun. He'd recovered, rehabilitated himself, remembered himself no matter how painful it had been to finally recall who he'd been and what he'd lost. Whatever had happened to him this time was something that hadn't been caused by his most disastrous invention, something much different by far. So, he'd reasoned again and again, it should be easy to remember who he was if he applied the right methods. Unfortunately, it wasn't so easy for Fiddleford to believe anymore, which was probably why he'd made the mantra so insistent in that regard.
Once he'd convinced himself that he could still remember who he was, the rest was easy as pie.
I am a scientist, the mantra continued.I live in Gravity Falls, and I will probably be moving out of the junkyard soon. I have a son named Tate, and I will not rest until I make amends with him. I have friends, and Ford Pines is one of them, and I have forgiven him for what happened all those years ago even if he hasn't forgiven himself – even if he'll never admit to never having forgiven himself. I was afraid of Bill Cipher before, and will not give him the satisfaction of fearing him this time. I will not forget, because I do not choose to forget: I willingly forgot last time and it cost me everything; I will remember because Ford needs me, because Dipper and Mabel need me, because Stan needs me, because the world needs me, because I am more than just a crazy old man in a junkyard, because there are things in my life worth remembering and I will never lose sight of that fact ever again.
The mantra was to be said every morning the moment he awoke, and every evening before he went to bed, every moment he was overwhelmed by anxiety… and every moment he felt another piece of himself slipping away. He had to keep the memories fresh and clear in his mind, otherwise they would be lost forever; and if he lost enough… well, he might not end up as crazy Old Man McGucket again, but being reduced to a blank slate of a human being wouldn't be much better.
So he'd keep reciting the mantra as long as he could and keep writing as much down as possible, keeping the memories white-hot inside his skull while he went about the usual duties of eating, sleeping, defending and surviving. He'd keep remembering until…
… Until…
…until he was rescued?
Not much chance of that, hillbilly boy. Nobody knows where you are 'cept for Bill, and he ain't gonna set you free now, not after what you and the others did. And besides, there's nobody left who can rescue you: this place is out of their reach. Nobody can see you through those windows out there, and nobody can find a way in. You're alone again and there's no way outta the junkyard this time. You're gonna forget everything that ever mattered – again – and you're gonna be Bill's plaything until you shrivel up like a slug in a saltshaker, of course.
Every time the hateful voice of his own doubt spoke up, Fiddleford had to spend at least ten minutes forcing the unpleasant train of thought out of his mind. He couldn't afford to think like this; he couldn't afford to be negative, not with his position so terribly precarious. He needed to be strong, he needed to believe that someone would find him sooner or later. After all, there'd been people in this stretch of the World Gone Weird before, people close enough to be seen through the windows. True, they hadn't stayed long enough to find him or even hear his voice, but surely there'd be someone who'd eventually blunder into his isolated little prison and rescue him. There'd have to be, or else more unfortunate ellipses would occur and Fiddleford would go insane imagining everything that could possibly go wrong.
And that was why the mantra was so terribly necessary – not just to keep his memories from decaying, but to force him to believe that he could remember.
So it began again:
My name is Fiddleford Hadron McGucket, and I can still remember who I am.
How had he gotten here again?
The point where short-term memory met long-term memory was becoming more and more indistinct as time went on: the time before Bill's ultimate victory was still somewhat intact, missing only a few troubling pieces, but the time after – right down to the last few hours of his stay in this strange new world – was infuriatingly vague.
He remembered that he'd been restored to human form, yes; the fact that he was no longer a tapestry was proof of that much. But there was a gap in his memories between then and his arrival in the wastelands, a gap that could have measured anywhere from an hour to a week: he'd presumably spent much of that time in the Fearamid, but he couldn't remember what had happened in that interval – a fact that Fiddleford was immensely thankful for; even now, with things slowly unravelling inside his head, he still remembered the electrical burns on Ford's neck. And then… Bill had told him something. Something important, something angry, something venomous – what was it about? Oh yes, revenge.
Annoyingly enough, Fiddleford couldn't remember what Bill was taking revenge for or how – not entirely, at any rate: he could easily guess that the ongoing loss of his memories was part of Bill's revenge, but he had the most uncanny feeling that this was only the beginning, that the insane triangle had something far worse planned for him at some point in the future, something probably involving agonizing pain and eternal torment if pattern recognition was any evidence. Bill had told him what it was; Fiddleford could still hear his demented laughter echoing from on high as he gloatingly explained the awful fate that was in store… but he couldn't remember the words.
One way or the other, once he'd finished explaining himself to him, Bill had opened Fiddleford's skull – not something he'd easily forget – tweaked around with a few pieces of neural tissue, stirred his cerebral cortex with a teaspoon, spat in his frontal lobes, closed up the skull and promptly kicked him out of the Fearamid.
He'd awoken… here. Wherever "here" was. This could have been anywhere in the days before Weirdmageddon; for all he knew, this might very well have once been Gravity Falls before Bill had started turning the planet into a cartographer's nightmare.
His new home – if he could call it that – was a vast cavern of gargantuan machinery and labyrinthine gantries, a veritable metropolis of gleaming metal and greasy concrete floors; disused conveyer belts, blast furnaces, engines, automated assembly lines, smelters, foundries, refineries, generators, and all manner of manufacturing equipment stretched as far the eye could see in every direction. It was eventually revealed in a somewhat roundabout fashion that, with the entire world now open to him, Bill had been gathering up just about every single industrial facility on the planet and fusing them together into one colossal manufactory large enough to form its own independent landmass. Fiddleford hadn't seen all of it yet, but he'd explored the complex for about twelve days straight before finally giving up and making his way back to his starting point, where he'd gotten started on attempts to find a) supplies, bedding and other necessities, and b) a means of escape.
Fortunately, Bill hadn't removed the offices or staffrooms from any of the buildings before merging them, so there were at least some creature comforts left around the place. In fact, by his usual standards, this strange manufactory was nothing short of palatial: raiding the staffrooms for soft couches, cushions and curtains gave him a relatively functional bed; the instruction manuals and the few dog-eared paperbacks he was able to scavenge from employee lockers swung wildly from "interesting" to "crushingly dull" but they at least kept him occupied; the bathrooms were all in order and stocked with all the toilet paper he could possibly need; and foraging from breakroom fridges and staff canteens set him up with enough food to sustain him for the next few months.
Only trouble is, that food's gonna start rotting sooner or later, and not even the stuff in the fridges will keep forever. And how long's the running water gonna last with Bill in charge?
Escape was not possible, unfortunately: just about every single exit in every single one of the merged buildings had been locked, welded shut, and in extreme cases, walled off. The windows were heavily barred, and even if he could find a way of unscrewing the fixtures that kept the bars in place, the windowpanes were quite clearly shatterproof – as Fiddleford discovered after lobbing a brick at one of them, almost throwing his back out in the process. In fact, the only point that might offer some kind of escape was a tiny skylight set in the roof of the largest of all the merged buildings. Unfortunately, it was simply too high to reach even with the aid of a ladder.
In fact, from the looks of things, the only way he could possibly reach the skylight was if someone happened to lower a rope through it. And who would think to look for him here, wherever here was? More to the point, he had the feeling that the windows were like two-way mirrors: every now and again, he thought he saw human figures outside the skylight, but none of them had ever seen him no matter how hard he tried to get their attention. Or perhaps the building itself was invisible, and the passers-by didn't even know there was a window nearby. Or maybe this was all just conjecture and nobody gave enough of a damn to investigate places like this. One way or another, the windows were out for the time being.
Unfortunately, the initial exploration of this place was the last truly unaffected point in Fiddleford's memory, and that was only because the complex was visible on a consistent basis. Everything else began slipping through his fingers – unless he kept it written down, of course.
Once he'd settled in, the Rust had begun gnawing holes in his mind and within perhaps a day or more, he'd forgotten his supply count, forgotten what Bill had told him, what Bill had done to him, what it was like to go from tapestry to human, and the details of his journey to this industrial hellhole. Needless to say, he'd learned not to stray from his position without mapping out his route. On the upside, at least he hadn't lost enough of his short-term memory to forget where he was.
But how long would that last?
By the time he'd noticed the Rust, he'd forgotten how long he'd been in the facility; before then, he'd assumed keeping a count of days hadn't been important, and now he cursed himself for it: for all he knew, he was already eating tainted food and contaminated water, and all because he hadn't bothered to keep track of when he'd retrieved them. He'd forgotten the exact quantity of food he'd gathered from the staffrooms, and he'd forgotten if there was any more to replace it once his current stock ran dry… and he'd forgotten if there were any hazards out there among the machines, if anything was broken, leaking, short-circuited, on fire or liable to explode at a moment's notice.
And he'd forgotten if he'd had a plan to deal with this situation. Maybe he'd had something better in mind than just waiting to be rescued, but he'd never know now because he hadn't written the goddamn thing down when he'd had the chance!
So now, he wrote everything down.
All the facts he desperately needed to know, from directions to supply lists, he added them to the notebook alongside his mantra. As for all the things he didn't need to know immediately or hadn't forgotten just yet, they ended up on the bulletin board of the staffroom that now served as his bedroom. Admittedly, the bulletin board had proved too small for the facts he'd needed to memorize, so he'd brought in a whiteboard from one of conference rooms and wrote them down on that… and when that finally ran out of room, he resorted to taping his notes to the wall, at first only ten, then twenty, then forty, then eighty, until an entire wall of the staffroom was covered in tiny scraps of notepaper – plus, a small tally of days scrawled into the brickwork (true, it didn't contain all the days he'd failed to record prior to his note-taking frenzy, but it helped to keep time in perspective – after all, he'd logged a grand total of two weeks in here by now).
On these walls were all the details of his life he needed to keep alive in his brain: names, addresses, dates, experiences; profiles of his friends, of Dipper and Mabel, of Ford and Stan; dossiers of those who wanted to do him harm – Bill, Pyronica, 8-Ball, Keyhole, Teeth, Lava Lamp; the proudest moments of his life, from his earliest engineering triumphs to the creation of the Shacktron; the greatest mistakes and follies he'd committed – his absence from Tate's life in his younger days, his failure to save Ford from himself, his terror-stricken flight from the project, the creation of the memory gun, the Society of the Blind Eye, and his descent into madness. His entire life story was here, just waiting to be read; if Fiddleford's memories grew hazy when he was here in the staffroom, all he'd need to do was sit down and let the details overwhelm him, and everything would be alright.
If he was out in the facility and looking for escape again, he had his notebook – and the mantra.
My name is Fiddleford Hadron McGucket, and I can still remember who I am.
By day fifteen (possibly), he was sure his method was working. After all, he was keeping everything fresh and sharp in his mind, at least as sharp as his rusty old short-term memory could allow: if he needed to remember something urgent, he'd just look down at his notebook; if he needed something more integral, he'd go back to the staffroom, have a seat and look over his great big wall of memories.
With things the way they were, all he had to do was keep the memories fresh and wait for rescue.
Immediately, upon letting the thought cross his mind, he knew he'd just made a terrible mistake: no matter what the situation, everything always, always went wrong when he was feeling perfectly confident. Every moment when Fiddleford had set aside his reservations with Ford's project ended with something blowing up in his face. And after that, he'd been so certain that the memory gun would solve all his problems, and that the Society of the Blind Eye would be there to help Gravity Falls.
Well, if "problems" meant little things like sanity, self-respect and family, and "help" meant vigorous brain-rape, technically he was right – but only technically.
And what about the Robot Pterodactyl, the Shame-Bot, the Gobblewonker, the Death Ray? In his madness, he'd thought they couldn't fail either. And the Shack-Tron, the cornerstone of their plan to rescue Ford and stop Bill? He'd thought it was a guaranteed win – everyone had! But lo and behold, the plan had all gone to hell and ended with him stranded in this oil-streaked maggot heap with his memories turning to rust, and all because he'd been stupid enough to think that everything would work out in the end.
This time, it happened just after lunch: he saw someone through the factory windows, someone walking along the crater-studded pathway just outside the manufactory, close enough to see him standing there if only this particular someone would just turn around.
But alas, he never did.
In fact, Fiddleford swore he glanced in the direction of the windows more than once, but the interloper never seemed to pay much attention - which made no sense: surely he saw the windows? Surely he knew there was a building there? It was possible that Bill had disguised the building or made it invisible or left it out of phase with local reality, but there was no way of recognizing the truth from where he stood.
Whoever this passer-by was, Fiddleford didn't recognize him, but he had a good view of his face: he was a kid, perhaps twelve to thirteen years old, short and skinny for his age, probably even skinnier than his pre-Weirdmageddon days if those ill-fitting clothes were any evidence. His face was pallid and narrow from malnourishment, his brown hair matted with dirt and sweat, his button nose streaked with blood, and despite the bruises around his eyes there was no mistaking the fear in his expression. However, even though he knew for a fact that he didn't recognize this kid, Fiddleford felt he should; something about the blue-and-white cap he wore, with its pine tree insignia, seemed almost improbably familiar to him.
But as Fiddleford watched, another figure unexpectedly staggered up from the dusty path across from the visitor and almost collapsed into the scrawny kid's arms – prompting an immediate shriek of "Pacifica!" from the boy, loud enough to be heard even through the thick glass.
Peering closer, he saw that the newcomer, this Pacifica, was a girl perhaps the same age as the boy she'd just stumbled into, immediately distinguished by the impressive length of blonde hair she sported. Slender, aristocratic in bearing and almost regal despite her current state of disarray, she was dressed in a potato sack and the tattered remains of a home-made sweater. Judging by the state of her feet, she'd been walking for quite a while – hence why she'd collapsed.
For a moment, the boy with the cap helped Pacifica stay upright, murmuring inaudible somethings as he did so. After that, they talked for a time, the boy seemingly asking questions, and the girl answering them in what could only be a state of growing panic; even from this distance, there was no mistaking the look on the blonde's face. And then, quite abruptly, Pacifica started to cry, at first hiding her face behind her hair to disguise the tears but eventually breaking down in undignified sobs. Alarmed, the boy reached out to touch her, hesitantly at first, as if not entirely sure how to begin; then, he very gently hugged her, holding the girl in his arms until her crying slowly ground to a halt.
To the boy's obvious surprise, Pacifica then kissed him; clearly, he didn't object though, for the kid immediately broke out in the dopey "did-that-really-just-happen" grin of the suddenly and unexpectedly head-over-heels.
And then Pacifica's eyes turned purple.
A split-second later, she wasn't Pacifica anymore: suddenly, she was eight feet tall, her skull distended by a massive set of curving horns, her eyes fused into one single, deranged orb, her skin a vivid neon pink, her limbs wreathed in searing white flames. Even with his mind being eaten away by the Rust, Fiddleford didn't forget one of Bill's Henchmaniacs so easily.
Pyronica allowed the boy a moment to savour the shock and the fear, before pouncing on him. Whatever she wanted, it was over in five seconds flat; Fiddleford didn't see most of it from his angle and Pyronica's cape blocked the view, but he could see that the Henchmaniac had a knife in her hand, and she was obviously angling it to cut something off – something around forehead level.
Moments later, Pyronica stepped away, clutching a bloody flap of skin in her hand: she'd flayed the kid's head from the bridge of his nose to the crown of his skull, leaving his face soaked in blood. Gleefully, she waved the tattered remnants of the boy's forehead in his face, before vanishing just as quickly as she'd appeared, leaving her unfortunate victim lying prone in the dirt, bleeding heavily. But then, to Fiddleford's surprise, the boy got to his feet – teary-eyed and shivering with pain, but somehow still soldiering on.
And then the boy changed. He took one step and his entire body warped and shifted, his flesh turning green and swiftly dissolving into a mass of vines that rolled along the road for several feet, before finally resolving themselves back into a human figure. Suddenly back to normal, the boy turned in the general direction of Heaven and screamed something profane at the distant shape of the Fearamid. His head wound was gone, but the trauma clearly lingered. Eventually, the boy hobbled on – and transformed again, this time into a red-and-white striped beach ball, which promptly ricocheted down the road for several feet before returning to human form. On and on he went, walking and transforming and transforming and walking – until he was finally out of sight.
And it wasn't until Fiddleford had gotten back to his wall of notes and studied the descriptions of his friends that he finally realized the truth:
The kid he'd just seen being mutilated was Dipper Pines. Not only had Fiddleford gotten within ten feet of being rescued, but he'd just watched a friend and ally being tortured – and he hadn't been able to do a damn thing.
In the end, he was so overwhelmed by the realization of his own helplessness that he could only collapse in a corner, furiously muttering his mantra in a desperate attempt to curtail any further weakness on his part –as if a mantra would be enough. But it had to be, or what was the point in continuing?
My name is Fiddleford Hadron McGucket, and I can still remember who I am.
Sixteen days into his imprisonment, something very unusual happened. Or at least, he was reasonably sure it was unusual: after all, he'd made dozens of notes on his own physical condition just in case he was hurt or sick at any point, and none of them mentioned this.
While walking along one of the many gantries and trying not to look down at the yawning abyss of merged factories floors just a few hundred feet below him, he happened to rest his hand on the railing for a moment – and when he next moved, the railing moved with him. Long since corroded beyond repair, the handrail snapped off at the stem and suddenly Fiddleford found himself with a length of solid steel attached to his left hand.
Looking closer, he discovered that the railing had somehow been absorbed by his flesh, somehow permeating his hand without leaving a single wound. More disturbingly, though he could easily force the metal deeper into his skin, he couldn't remove it – for it wasn't embedded in him but fused and merged with his being. Eventually, he'd pushed the rail all the way into his arm, where it was swiftly assimilated: beneath the flesh of the afflicted limb, unnatural shapes oozed and shifted as the steel was slowly incorporated into his bone structure, and wirelike growths of metal wound their way across the skin of his arms like tiny silvery veins.
Somehow, Fiddleford had gained the power to alter his physiology, his body responding to the presence of metal and incorporating it into its structure. And as disturbing as the experience was, the ad hoc augmentations had made his arm far stronger and far more resilient than before: the muscles no longer ached and throbbed every time he climbed the ladder to the fourth floor, his grip on the rungs no longer threatened to slip, and even the arthritic pain in his knuckles had faded.
For a time, he feared that this was some new trick being played on him by Bill, that any minute the metal he'd assimilated would suddenly tear his bones apart from the inside. But as the day wore on and no negative side effects resulted from his self-modification, curiosity won out over fear, and Fiddleford began to investigate the particulars of his new state of being. After all, perhaps this was something he could use to escape if he used it correctly.
So, he experimented: descending to the factory floor, he scavenged for any loose pieces of metal, gathering up spools of copper wire, steel ball-bearings, titanium rods, car batteries, iron ingots, even empty soda cans. Then, once he'd found a room bright enough to serve as an impromptu operating theatre, he went about slowly incorporating the metal into the flesh of his left arm. It took several hours, but eventually his arm was successfully augmented, and felt stronger than ever before: within minutes of his alterations, almost all the old aches and pains in that particular limb were gone, and he was strong enough easily shift the toppled-over filing cabinets upright. Along the way, he found that the process only worked if he was concentrating hard on the metal itself, which at least prevented him from accidentally merging with things he didn't want to absorb.
Enraptured, Fiddleford decided to try augmenting other parts of his body. However, as he considered the idea, he realized that his previous approach – vacuuming up whatever metal he thought would work and letting his body do the rest – might not be the most efficient. Perhaps there were other methods of alteration – methods that might finally put his skills as an inventor to good use.
Back in the days before he'd recovered his sanity, back when he was just Old Man McGucket, the idea of cyborg prosthetics had briefly fascinated him: after all, he was getting old, and after god only knew how many years spent living rough in a junkyard, his health wasn't always in a cooperative mood. For a time, he'd toyed with the notion of improving himself through mechanical organs, imagining himself equipped with piston-powered limbs and electronic eyes, his stomach replaced with a furnace, his heart a clockwork engine that never ran down. But at some point, some dregs of sanity had reached his brain just long enough for him to realize the logical problem: replacing these organs meant removing them and performing self-surgery with no anaesthetic in a non-sterile junkyard was a bit too much of a risk, even for him. So he'd put the idea to one side and got started on the Gobblewonker.
But now that his condition allowed him to assimilate metal without shedding blood or risking infection, perhaps Fiddleford could try the idea for real; maybe, if he built a prosthetic detailed and imposing enough, it wouldn't be absorbed by his arm – but vice-versa.
It took five hours to design a functional prosthetic limb and two more to scour the manufactory for the parts he needed to make it. Fortunately, many of the facilities that comprised this place still had tons and tons of raw materials left around, along with the equipment needed to make it work: the controls to the machines were all there, and the power was still on. All Fiddleford needed to do was find it and set to work. Needless to say, it was a long, arduous process spent running back and forth between various banks of machinery: forging the metal components, readying the wires, cooling the metal, assembling the motors and joints, testing the electrical systems and hoping that the solar panels would be enough to fuel it.
Eventually, his newest masterpiece was ready: a gleaming prosthetic limb, a skeletal arm of servos and gears carefully layered with armour-plates of chrome and steel; testing confirmed that its mechanisms were sturdy enough punch through a concrete wall, but delicate enough to balance an egg on the index finger (just as well, really – it was the last egg in the entire building).
And when he placed the prosthetic over his right arm, the assimilation process was different: just as Fiddleford had suspected, instead of incorporating the armour and mechanisms into his flesh, it incorporated his flesh into the prosthetic. His nervous system merged instantly with the circuitry, muscles interfacing perfectly with the servomotors and pistons – even his blood seemed to fuel it as readily as the little solar panel. True, the new arm didn't have much in the way of skin on the surface, but that wasn't worth worrying about, truth be told: as long as the mechanism was functional, he needn't care.
By that time, sunset was already creeping through the manufactory windows, and so Fiddleford scaled the gantry and strode back along the catwalk like a conquering hero, one arm supported by alloy-plated bones and striated with veins of incorporated metals, the other a magnificent steel-plated appendage that wouldn't have looked out of place on a medieval suit of armour. Maybe with these augmentations and more, he might have the power to break free of the manufactory: if these arms were as strong as he believed, maybe it would be simple enough just to do away with the skylight entirely and just punch his way out through the wall… and if he could keep his notes with him, enough to keep his memories intact and his mission firmly in place, maybe he could then try to find some way of stopping Bill for good.
And it was that point, just as he was at his most confident, that everything quite naturally went horribly wrong.
Perhaps half a mile away from the staffroom, a hollow whoosh split the silence of the manufactory, and Fiddleford caught the distinctive smell of smoke from somewhere up ahead. Then, something exploded – not one of the machines down on the factory floor, thank god, but something up in the office. Something was definitely ablaze, though, and the only consolation was that it didn't have the harsh, chemical stink of more dangerous fires; no, this one had the more commonplace aroma of…
…burning paper…
"Dadgum hornswogglin' salt-lickin' flour-flushin' consarn…"
Fiddleford flung himself along the catwalk at a breakneck pace, cursing himself for straying so far from his encampment without double-checking the area for fire hazards, muttering a long chain of hillbilly expletives as he ran. By the time he'd left the gantry and vaulted into the carpeted office area, he was also kicking himself for not augmenting his legs as well, for his knees were just about ready to snap in two. But finally, he reached the end of the final hallway, rounded the corner and skidded to a halt right in front of the staff room door.
Inside, the room was ablaze from floor to ceiling, the carpet a rolling inferno, the meagre office artworks swiftly charring beyond recognition, the furniture little more than blazing husks, the potted plants all but gone.
And at the centre of it all, Fiddleford's notes – the memories he'd been so desperate to put to paper – were on fire.
It took him fifteen minutes to find a working fire extinguisher, and by then his notes had been reduced to ashes, the whiteboard had been melted to slag, and the room was beyond saving. By the time he'd finally smothered the flames, Fiddleford was just about ready to cry; perhaps he already was crying, though that might have just been his eyes watering from all the smoke.
Then, just as he was starting to wonder what could have caused this, he noticed a sheet of yellow paper nailed to the staffroom door, just out of reach of the flames. By that stage, he could already tell it was a letter from Bill, but he picked it up and started reading anyway.
HIYA, FIDS! the message blared in angry, jagged capital letters.
LOVE WHAT YOU'VE DONE WITH THE PLACE! THOUGHT I'D REDECORATE WHILE YOU WERE OUT – HOPE YOU DON'T MIND!
BY THE WAY, I'M BETTING YOU LIKE ALL THAT METAL IN YOUR BODY! YOU SHOULD, I WENT TO A LOT OF TROUBLE JUST TO MAKE YOUR FLESH ASSIMILATE METAL ON TOUCH. TRUE, IT'S BEEN A LOT SUBTLER UP UNTIL TODAY. BY NOW, YOU'VE DISPLACED MORE THAN HALF YOUR BRAIN TISSUE JUST BY WALKING AROUND BAREFOOT.
OH COME ON, WHAT DID YOU THINK WAS CAUSING THE MEMORY LOSS THIS TIME?
ALL I HAD TO DO WAS PLAY AROUND WITH YOUR FLESH FOR A BIT, MAKE SURE YOUR NOODLE WENT FIRST, AND KEEP YOUR MEMORIES FROM CARRYING OVER TO THE NEW FORMAT. YOU DID THE REST – AGAIN. DON'T WORRY: YOU'LL KEEP YOUR ENGINEERING KNOWLEDGE, AND YOU'LL BE ABLE TO FORM PROPER MEMORIES AND RETAIN THEM ONCE THIS IS ALL OVER AND DONE WITH – YOU JUST WON'T BE ABLE TO REMEMBER THE LIFE OF FIDDLEFORD MCGUCKET. THAT'S NOT SO BAD, IS IT? IT'S NOT AS IF YOU ACCOMPLISHED ANYTHING OF LASTING VALUE, AND BESIDES, YOU'LL BE SO MUCH MORE FUN TO PLAY WITH ONCE YOUR BRAIN'S COMPLETELY CONVERTED TO METAL.
I THINK I'LL MAKE YOU MY NEW TOYMAKER! AFTER ALL, YOU'RE THE ONLY ONE WITH THE TALENT AND THE TASTE FOR MAKING MECHANICAL MONSTERS, AND I NEED FRONTLINE TROOPS – SOMETHING BIG AND SCARY TO GET THE NEW SUBJECTS PROPERLY FREAKED OUT BEFORE THEY MEET THE REAL DEAL! I'VE EVEN GOT A COOL NEW TITLE FOR YOU. BELIEVE ME, YOU'LL LIKE IT – ONCE YOU'VE FORGOTTEN EVERYTHING ELSE, OF COURSE.
NOW, YOU MIGHT BE ASKING ME, "BILL, WHY ARE YOU BEING SO SADISTIC? WHY TORTURE ME LIKE THIS?" AND I'D USUALLY SAY "WHY NOT?" BUT I'M IN A GIVING MOOD, AND BESIDES IT'S NOT AS IF YOU'LL REMEMBER THIS FOR LONG. SO HERE'S THE REASON FOR THE RUST: YOU SPOILED MY FUN. THIRTY YEARS AGO, FORDSIE WAS MY FAVOURITE PAWN: SMART, OPEN-MINDED, NAÏVE, AND SO MUCH FUN TO PLAY WITH, ESPECIALLY AFTER ALL THOSE DECADES I SPENT DEALING WITH THOSE DIMWITTED NORTHWESTS. YOU WOULDN'T BELIEVE THE THINGS I MADE OL' SIXER DO TO HIMSELF WHEN HE WAS POSSESSED – OR ASLEEP! – AND I HAD HIM HOOKED SO WELL, HE COULDN'T EVEN BRING HIMSELF TO SUSPECT ME. YOU'VE NO IDEA JUST HOW CUTE IT WAS, WATCHING HIM TRY TO JUSTIFY WHAT I'D DONE TO HIM, WATCHING HIM TYING HIMSELF IN KNOTS TO AVOID ACCUSING HIS MUSE AND PARTNER.
BUT THEN YOU BLUNDERED IN AND YOU SNAPPED HIM OUT OF IT – YOU MADE HIM BREAK THE DEAL. YOU SPOILED MY FUN, TOOK MY FAVOURITE TOY AWAY FROM ME AND GOT THE PORTAL SHUT DOWN FOR THE NEXT THREE DECADES. AND AS IF THAT WASN'T BAD ENOUGH, YOU WENT ON TO BUILD THE MEMORY GUN – THE SAME MEMORY GUN THAT FORDSIE AND STAN TRIED TO KILL ME WITH.
SO I'M TAKING EVERYTHING FROM YOU – WHAT LITTLE YOU HAD ANYWAY: YOUR MEMORIES, YOUR FAMILY, YOUR FRIENDS, AND YOUR HUMANITY.
DON'T STRUGGLE. JUST LIE BACK AND LET IT HAPPEN. YOU MIGHT EVEN ENJOY IT.
LOVE, BILL.
And then the paper, was gone, vanished into flame with a flicker of magical energy.
Somewhere back in what passed for reality, Fiddleford sat down heavily amidst the ruins of his tiny encampment and struggled valiantly not to lose all composure.
I've still got my notebook, he told himself. I've still got the mantra.
My name is Fiddleford Hadron McGucket, and I can still remember who I am.
In the days that followed the burning of his notes, the Rust accelerated dramatically.
Now that he knew that his newfound affinity for metal was causing his memory loss, Fiddleford tried to avoid touching anything metallic at any and all costs, but it was futile: even when he went to the trouble of stealing a pair of shoes from someone's locker, miniscule tendrils of metal kept reaching up from the gantries and pouring themselves into his veins. Even in the carpeted areas of the office weren't safe: from beneath the carpet, wires and cables snaked out of the floorboards to assault him, stabbing at his feet like tiny scorpions. With every step he took, the more his brain turned to metal; with every move he made, his memories got a little fainter.
He tried to record his memories again, god knew he tried, but the process of making the first set of notes had depleted the paper supplies at this end of the office, and by the time he'd found a new staffroom to call home and enough paper to write everything down, everything he wanted to record was spiralling around the plughole.
He couldn't remember where he was born, he couldn't remember where he'd grown up, he couldn't remember the names of his parents, his childhood friends, the schools where he'd been taught, and even the details of his first proper experiment were gone. He remembered Gravity Falls, yes, and Dipper and Mabel and so many others, but only because they were mentioned in the second half of the mantra – and he couldn't remember what they looked like! He could barely remember how they met!
He couldn't remember what Tate looked like anymore; he couldn't remember his own son's face!
And Ford…
He remembered the portal, yes, and he remembered getting briefly dragged into it, and he even remembered the last argument he'd had with Ford about it. With effort, he even remembered how he felt about Ford – the sense of lost friendship, the crushing despair, the wish that he could make Ford see what Bill was doing to him, the regret at erasing the memories of their time together – and later, the sense of joy he'd felt at seeing him alive and well again, of being able to reconcile with him at long last. He remembered all the emotions and impressions and complicated thoughts…
But he couldn't remember Ford's face.
Bit by bit, the memories went: he couldn't remember when he'd started getting his memories back or how; he couldn't remember what he was doing in the time after he'd left Ford and the time before he'd gotten his memories back. He couldn't remember what Tate had been like when he was younger: all the happy memories of his son's childhood were gone, replaced with emptiness and a few hazy recollections of the now-adult Tate's embarrassment. He couldn't remember his wife – her face, her name, what he'd loved about her, all of it was nothing more than void inside his skull now. Everything was going, bit by bit, piece by piece – often while he tried to write it down.
In the end, he was left with only three pages of concrete memory he could add to his notebook. He'd have to add it to his notebook, because now he knew he couldn't afford to put it up on a wall – not when Bill could just set fire to it.
But what makes you think he won't set fire to this? He asked himself. What makes you think he'll play fair with your notebook?
Maybe. Can't remember if he played fair with anyone.
One way or another, the days always ended the same way – with Fiddleford huddled in a corner of his newest encampment, frantically reviewing his notebook in a desperate attempt to keep his memory – what little remained of it – fresh in his transmuting brain.
My name is Fiddleford Hadron McGucket, he told himself. Fiddleford Hadron McGucket.
He didn't bother adding "and I can still remember who I am." After all, what would be the point in lying to himself?
Bill gave him another week alone with his decomposing memories before the inevitable finally happened.
One morning, he awoke to the smell of burning paper flooding the air once again and opened his eyes to find the notebook hovering five feet above the ground, merrily burning to cinders.
And by the time he reached it, everything that remained of his recorded memories had been well and truly incinerated.
This time, he couldn't bring himself to panic. He couldn't even find himself to be sad about losing everything, now that the Rust had almost run its course.
After all, had rebelling against Bill done him any good at all?
Had resisting the Rust done him any good?
Had anything he'd ever done in his entire life been of any lasting value?
He could barely remember the answers to these questions anymore: what was the point in trying? Maybe it would be better if he just let go. Maybe it would be better if he admitted defeat, let Bill do whatever he wanted with him, abandoned hope once and for all. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad: maybe he really would be able to form new memories once this was over and done with. Maybe, if he just went back to sleep, this whole nightmare would be over when he finally awoke.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, a few lingering embers of hope sparked feebly, insisting that he at least try to keep the mantra alive. Perhaps too tired to ignore the impulse, perhaps consumed by nostalgia for a past he could barely remember anymore, he racked his brains for the mantra, just so he could repeat it one last time.
My name is…
My name…
My name was…
He sighed.
"Aw banjo polish," he muttered disconsolately.
The Ruinous Toymaker blinked, all eight of his eyes whirring faintly as their shutters opened and closed in cyborg bemusement.
A letter?
Most of the time, if Bill wanted something done, he'd just materialize in the Toymaker's office and issue his edicts directly – or if he was busy playing with his favoured playthings or planning the spread of Weirdness to the next star system in line, he'd send one of the Henchmaniacs in his stead. Correspondence was unheard of. After all, there was to be no paperwork in the forge, only relentless construction, augmentation, and animation: Bill wanted biomechanical monstrosities to toy with alongside his organic captives, clockwork soldiers to herd fresh victims into the path of the real nightmares, and most of all, he wanted to see if a human intellect could ever create abominations equal to those Bill could conjure with a single thought.
So why would he bother sending letters to the Forge? Who could have simply made this grubby little envelop materialize in his office?
Probably Kryptos. Maybe Hectorgon. After all, this wouldn't be the first time those two teamed up for a letterbomb gig.
By all rights, the Toymaker should have just thrown the offending article away and scuttled back out of his office as quickly as his numerous legs could carry him. He had work to do, after all: he had new parts to manufacture, new monsters to build, and at least twelve screaming amputees to outfit with cybernetic limbs. He couldn't afford to take breaks, not when there were so many wondrous constructions to be complete, and certainly not with Bill demanding constant updates.
And yet, something in the back of his mind – amidst all the fibre-optic cables and titanium plating – stirred at the sight of the wax-sealed envelope on his desk, something that seemed to call to the Toymaker's past.
This impulse made no sense to the Toymaker: he had no distant past; he had no past at all, in fact. He hadn't even existed until Bill had given him life and form and given him a purpose here at the Forge. What was the point in ruminating on days gone by when he'd barely lived through seven of them in total?
But in the end, curiosity won out over logic: extending a pincer from the palm of his right hand, he plucked the envelope from the desk and slit it open with a knife-tipped fingernail. Finding nothing hazardous inside, he held out an official-looking communique, complete with elaborate letterheads and insignia – though most of them had been rendered hazy and indistinct through exposure to wind and rain. He felt like he should recognize these blurry symbols, but he couldn't account for exactly why.
The message read as followed:
Dear Fiddleford
You don't know me, and yet you do; you've seen me several times before in Gravity Falls, and yet you've never seen or heard me before today. If this sounds like I'm talking in riddles, it's because I am: Bill is always watching, as I'm sure you know by now, and I can't afford to have him learn too much about me. I know you have no reason to trust this letter after the one you received from Bill, but please believe me when I say that I want to help you.
Unfortunately, that's proving a bit difficult at the moment: Bill's altered the atomic structure of this factory-forge he's imprisoned you in, distanced it from the usual loopholes I can provide aid from: only Henchmanacs can get in and out without Bill's permission. I can help you, but it's going to take a long time for me to get all the pieces in position: one of the others – like Mabel or Stanford – might be able to free you, but Bill's keeping too close an eye on them for me to engineer their escape right now. Until everything's in position, you need to keep remembering. I know it won't be easy, but please try to hang on to what remain of your memories and don't lose hope. Help is on the way.
From your friend and ally, Mr A
For a moment, the Ruinous Toymaker regarded the letter with confusion: names like "Fiddleford," "Mabel" and "Stanford" meant nothing to him of course, but for the briefest of instants they felt uncannily familiar, as if he had known their owners once upon a time. For a moment, he even considered investigating further. But just as quickly as it had appeared, the sense of recognition was gone again, and the names were once more as alien to him as anything outside the Forge.
"Huh," he muttered. "Wouldn't want to be this Fiddleford fella, whoever he is."
And with that, the Ruinous Toymaker crumpled the letter into a ball, tossed it down the recycling chute and got back to work.
A/N: This chapter's soundtrack choice is Smoke by Ben Folds.
Coming up next - Robbie's game!