Yesterday's Tomorrows
(Sunday, August 7, 2016)
Chapter 4: Gravity Falls' Weirdest Home Movies
"What the heck is that?" Dipper asked. He and Wendy stared at an illuminated image—not carved or painted on rock, but shimmering transparently in the air, like a movie projected on fog. It had no sound, but it was a moving picture, and it showed, evidently, a battle between Bill and Native Americans.
They didn't look at all lifelike—very flat, like primitive drawings animated to a semblance of life—and Dipper had the sense that what he was seeing might not have been real, just a possibility that never materialized.
But it did look fierce. Bill floated around some distance above the warriors, who angrily hurled spears and shot arrows at the drifting, top-hatted pyramid. When an arrow or spear came close, he casually waved it off and it veered or caught fire and poofed to ashes.
It looked as if he were daring them to try and hurt him—though they seemed to have no chance of doing that. He just demonstrated his invulnerability. But then he began to fight back, pointing his finger and firing rays of red energy at the foes. He started to pick them off, one by one, never missing as the humans fell dead.
"Man, this reminds me so much of Weirdmageddon," Wendy, said, crossing her arms and rubbing her biceps. "How do we turn it off?"
"I'm afraid to press the carving again," Dipper admitted. "Wait, what's this?"
The scene had changed abruptly. Now in an even sketchier style, Bill floated above a circled group, who were not attacking him, but holding hands and—possibly—chanting. These were even less detailed than the first, fighting group had been, little more than stick figures, really like a cave etching crudely animated.
"That must be the Zodiac!" Wendy said. "Like, the ancient Chinook people were trying to defeat him, the same way that Dr. P. was gonna try in the Fearamid!"
With his eye frowning down at his enemies—or it looked like that, anyway—Bill sharply pointed as if ready to wipe them all out, but in that instant, all the figures below him raised their hands toward him—and he started to come apart. The blocks that comprised his body began to crumble from the base of the pyramid, and he waved his arms desperately, trying to stay airborne. Then, looking very two-dimensional, he crumbled and shrank, either through an unseen rift or just into thin air. The movement froze, and yellow letters shimmered into existence:
ODDS AGAINST SUCCESS TOO HIGH.
UGXSR KM WIKFYNPM WSBYG BME TGGI VHIMM GEIO FGQPUUDS.
"Oh, great. Bill really liked ciphers," Dipper said. "I think that's where he took his alias."
"Alias? You mean that's not his real name?" Wendy asked.
The glowing words just hung there in the air. No further movement and no scene change. Dipper shook his head. "As Grunkle Ford would say, 'Not likely.' See, Bill came from an unimaginably ancient time and a completely alien race. From a whole different reality, in fact. I think that after he started to hang out in the Mindscape of Earth, he just went by Bill Cipher for—uh, I don't really know, just reasons of his own." With his phone, he snapped a photo of the glowing display, not using a flash, and then confirmed on the screen that he could read the letters.
"What's this one say?" Wendy asked.
"Don't know. It's not a three-back. Probably a Vigenère, and the easiest solution to them is to know the keyword, which we don't. It's a short message, so it'll be hard to decipher."
"So—'odds against.' What does that mean?"
"This is just a guess," Dipper said. "Bill was trying to take over Earth by persuading the Chinook wizard Modoc to build a portal. This might be—a computer simulation to judge whether he had a good chance of success or not? Maybe he foresaw that with the Zodiac completed and people on it opposing him, he wouldn't be able to succeed. But I don't really know."
Wendy asked, "Dude, if we'd walked into that picture, would we be, like, teleported to wherever it was taking place?"
Shaking his head, Dipper bent his knees and grabbed a handful of sand, which he tossed. It flew through the image of the letters without disturbing it and landed in a puff of the far side. "I . . . don't think so," he said. "I think it's just a picture, but I don't understand why Bill would have created it—unless—it might be his home movies!"
"Oh, great," Wendy said. "Like Mabel and her scrapbook!"
"Whoa!" Dipper said.
Because the moment Wendy spoke, the picture changed. Now it showed a twelve-year-old Mabel, wearing the shooting-star sweater that back then was her favorite, lying on her stomach on the Shack floor and pasting photos of a fishing trip into her scrapbook. The movement lasted only ten seconds, and then it faded to a dimmed still image, and more letters appeared:
GIPO SQ E PCK TGCBGB. C BSJD IM "QRSMDMLQ WRKV".
"That's not an animation," Wendy said. "That's really a picture of Mabes. I remember her just like that, braces and all. That was like a real-life movie, not a computer thing."
"That little scene happened right after we tried to catch the Gobblewonker," Dipper said. "I remember the photos she was pasting in her book." He took a picture of this label, too, showing against the faint image of Mabel intent on pasting in the last photo.
"I wonder if we can make it show anything we want," Wendy said. "Hey! I wanna see me and Dip catch the car thieves!"
Nothing happened.
"Um—show us diving into Moon Trap Pond," Dipper said.
Still nothing.
Wendy tried again: "Show us bustin' out of Mabel Land."
It did, in a spasmodic, brief twitch of movement that lasted no more than three seconds, like a repeating-loop animated .GIF. The bubble hovered between the cliffs, it popped, and Mabel, Dipper, Wendy, and Soos sailed out on the back of a giant leaping Waddles.
RSU NMB DLCI IQMENO? AFY LYN E USPJ YJ RSXYXMSW? WMWIZYHW GMJV TYI!
Dipper photographed this and said, "Uh, translate that into clear English."
The letters re-formed:
HOW DID THEY ESCAPE? WHO HAD A WILL OF TITANIUM? SOMEBODY WILL PAY!
"Man, I think I got it. This is Bill's diary!" Wendy said. "He made notes of things that happened, or of plans he was making—like Dr. P. does in the Journals!"
"'Will of titanium?' You know, this shows that Bill didn't expect Mabel to ever leave the prison bubble," Dipper said. "He was surprised, so he somehow captured the moment to study it later. Not with a camera. The eyebats, maybe. Huh. Uh—show us how Grunkle Stan got his memory back!"
Nothing.
He tried again: "Show me how Bill Cipher saved my life when the Horroracle tried to kill me."
Again, nothing.
"How come it doesn't always work?" Wendy asked.
"I don't know. Unless—wait, those things happened after Grunkle Stan punched him out—"
At those words, the image briefly flared red, then went dark.
"No message this time," Wendy said. "Maybe that red flash was—Bill Cipher dying?"
"Maybe. I think," Dipper said slowly, "this kinda replays Bill's memories, the ones that he selects to record? So it can only show us what he knew or thought or, like you say, was planning. After he got punched out—the memories stop. I mean, he couldn't even show that business with the Horroracle, and he was in the Mindscape for that, so this device or whatever must have been something he could operate only before Weirdmageddon. Does that make sense?"
"Much as anything," Wendy said. "Turn it back on. Or switch on your flashlight. It's too dark in here."
"Show that time at the carnival," Dipper said. "When Wendy wanted the panda duck."
"Oh, dude, no, that's painful!" Wendy protested.
But the floating image lighted up, and they saw Dipper toss the baseball up and catch it confidently, then make a wild throw. A second later, the ball whizzed back into view, knocked over the milk bottles, and the carny handed Wendy the colorful creature of indeterminate species.
And this time the caption read in ordinary English:
PINE TREE SCORES ONE FOR RED! AR, THOUGH.
"Um—Dip, that never happened," Wendy said. "I remember distinctly, the ball bounced back and clocked me a good one in my right eye. It was black for days."
Dipper gulped. "Um—it did happen," he said. "But you don't remember it, because it happened in an alternate time line—wait, alternate reality! That's what the AR stands for!"
"You better tell me about this," Wendy said, studying the faded image of her grinning from ear to ear as she cuddled her prize against her chest. "As I recall it, you gave me my panda duck a long time later, that summer when you and Mabel and your uncles were comin' back from Canada and happened on the same carnival. Is that wrong?"
"No, it's right," Dipper said. "See, that's this time line. This is the one when I got a second chance to win it for you, and I'd had a lot of practice, so it just took me, um, a time or two to win it. What we just saw, well, it had to do with the first time we ran into Blendin Blandin and the Time Paradox Enforcement Squadron. See, me and Mabel stole his time tape—because the first time I tried to win you the prize, I did hit you with a ricochet, and then Robbie showed up, and I felt awful—"
He told the whole story, and somewhat to his irritation, the scenes played out as he described them. He ended after he'd told how he'd gone back one last time so that Mabel, not Pacifica, would win Waddles and not turn into Miserable Mabel pounding her head against the totem pole. The image faded to one of Mabel hugging a relatively tiny Waddles.
This time the caption that popped up read:
Too bad, Pine Tree, you didn't get Red,
So Shooting Star got her pig instead—
It's a tough lesson, but now you see
That some things that happen are meant to be.
"Aw, man!" Wendy said. "You really went back over and over and over to try to win me that prize?"
"I had a crush on you," Dipper reminded her. "And first, I didn't want to hurt you, and second, I wanted you to like me."
"Yeah, yeah, I already liked you. But it was sweet of you."
Dipper had to admit something. "Wendy, every single time I went back to try again, I gave you a black eye until I finally figured the winning angle, the one that needed Mabel's help. So in my memory I didn't just hit you with a wild throw one time—more like fifty!"
"Well, I don't remember 'em, so they don't count," Wendy said. "Hey, man, I forgive you. You were trying to be nice."
"Thanks, Magic Girl."
Wendy squeezed his hand. "I wonder if, like, this thing stores Cipher's memories and junk. Maybe it's a kind of back-up system, like on a computer."
"Maybe," Dipper said. "or maybe he used it mostly to plan his attacks?"
Wendy said, "Hey, show us a plan of Bill's that he didn't use."
A few seconds later, Dipper regretted that request.
It showed Dipper—no, Bipper, as Mabel had called him, Cipher possessing Dipper's body—seizing Journal 3 and successfully escaping with it from the puppet show.
"Like an animated sketch again," Wendy said. "You can tell this one didn't really happen."
True, but the sketch was so detailed and clear that it made Dipper feel nauseated as he watched. Bipper arrived in the park and paused to scribble a note—not in code, but in plain English, and printed rather than in longhand: "I can't take it anymore. Demons are invading my mind. I'm sorry, Mabel, but I have to end it the only way I know how."
And then, to their horror, Bipper, still in the Reverend costume, climbed up to the top of the water tower and without even hesitating, leaped off—and they saw triangle Bill emerge from Dipper's plummeting body an instant before it hit with a sickening but silent crash. Then Bill, hovering over the body, looked as if he were laughing. The scene froze on that.
THEY'LL THINK HE WAS CRAZY, JUST LIKE ME!
NOW HE'S A GHOST FOR ETERNITY.
POSSESSING IS FUN, IN A BODY WITH BREATH—
NEXT, SHOOTING STAR CAN JOIN BROBRO IN DEATH.
Dipper angrily hurled another handful of sand through the image. "He was planning to kill me and Mabel both!" he said.
Wendy hugged him. "He didn't, though. These were just his plans. Like, he created the scenario but never got to play it out 'cause Mabel beat him. Of course, back then I thought she'd gone crazy, shooting off all those fireworks right over our heads! If I'd known what she was really doing, I wouldn't have walked out on her show."
—Want to watch any more?
Not if you don't, Dip. This is some creepy junk, man.
"I've had enough," Dipper said. "Let me see if I can turn this projector, whatever it is, off." He switched on the flashlight and gingerly pressed the bow tie again. The floating images did flick to darkness. "Good," he said. "Let's go now. I'll look at the pictures later and see if I can figure out the codes."
They retraced their steps to the narrow passage and squeezed their way through, then reached the first tunnel—where they stopped short, because in the dim illumination from the flashlight, a figure sat on a boulder, bent over and huddled.
Dipper shone the light on it.
A wrinkled face, beneath a mess of thin, unruly, white hair, squinted eyes peering through heavy, thick spectacles into the light—Dipper's first thought was A witch!
It was an old, old woman, her stooped shoulders beneath a colorful shawl, a walking stick clutched in her hands. She shook as she leaned on the cane and with an enormous effort got to her feet. "Is that really you?" she asked in a cracked, breathless voice. "Wendy? Broseph? I kept telling them you'd come back. All these years, I kept telling them. I've come here looking for you nearly every day."
"Who—are you?" Dipper asked.
"Oh, Brobro," the old woman croaked. "I'm your sister. I'm Mabel. You two vanished in this cave more than sixty years ago. But I knew you'd come back. I think you busted something, though. Broseph—" she broke off into a hacking cough—"We gotta fix it. We gotta fix you."