Yesterday's Tomorrows
(Sunday, August 7, 2016)
Chapter 5: Mr. Cipher Lends a Hand
"Mabel?" Dipper asked, coming closer, blinking in disbelief. She was inches shorter than he, with gray hair going white, and she bore little resemblance to his twin, though she was wearing a colorful sweater and—yes, even a matching hairband.
"Don't look at me," Mabel murmured, turning away awkwardly and ducking her head. "I'm so old!"
"You're Mabel," he said, and he hugged her. He felt her trembling and realized that she was frightened—overjoyed, yes, but frightened, too. "What—how—did we just vanish?"
"All those years ago," Mabel whispered. "We looked and looked, and somebody found Wendy's old car, you know, it was green, I think, and I used to have a dog—what was his name?"
"Tripper?" Wendy asked softly.
The sweet, sad smile that came to her face made her look more like Mabel. "Oh, yes, I named him after the character in Dipper's books. Yes, Tripper. How could I ever forget that sweet little boy? He tracked you down to the cave opening. Grunkle Ford knew something about it, and as soon as he could he came to investigate, but we couldn't find any trace of you inside. But I knew you'd come back some day. I always knew. I've lived in Gravity Falls all this time, just waiting. I'm so glad to see you! Was it Blendin and time travel, or—"
"We don't know what's happened," Dipper said. "We're as much in the dark as you are. What—what year is it?"
Mabel shook her head and stepped back from him. "I'm so sorry, Dipper, but I'm not supposed to answer any questions at all. I—well, I'm gonna need some help. I need to call someone. Excuse me."
Dipper realized there was more light in the outer cave than there had been, and then he saw why: the torturous crawl-only entrance had been tunneled out into an arched opening about as wide and tall as a normal door, through which some daylight seeped.
Mabel mimed a phone—thumb to her ear, pinkie to her mouth—and said, "Dr. Sheaffer, please . . . hello, Billy! It's happened. I told you it would. Yes, really. Yes, Dipper and Mabel! I mean they're back! Yes! Wendy and Dipper both are back, and they haven't aged. Yes, that's where I am now, the outer cave. Come as fast as you can." She finished and shook her hand as if flicking water off her fingertips. "Bill will be here in a few minutes."
Wendy took Dipper's hand. Dude, I think she's hallucinating.
—I can't imagine Mabel this old. Maybe she's—you know.
From behind her specs, Mabel gave them a sharp look. "You've still got that mental voodoo going, haven't you? I know, you're both thinking I'm senile. I'm not. Everybody has these phone implants nowadays!" For a few seconds she just smiled at both of them, but then she teared up. "So young. You're both so young. Please just stand there quietly and let me look at you. I remember you both so well!"
Dipper swallowed hard. "Mabel—what about Mom and Dad? Our Grunkles?"
She shook her head. "I can't answer questions, Dipper. Billy warned me that if I ever found you, and I have, I can't talk about anything like that, or I'll meck up the time line and you'll never get back."
"What? Meck?" Wendy asked, blinking.
Mabel did a slap-the-air gesture. "I forgot you wouldn't know that! Old-timey slang, now, though, what the kids said, oh, thirty years ago. Means, uh, let me see, fu—no, that was a dirty one—mess! That's it. Mess up the time lines and you won't ever find the right one."
"So—we can't ask you any questions at all?" Dipper asked.
"Nuh-uh, Broseph. Or you can, but I can't answer any. You have to trust Billy, now. I can tell you he's called the Peacemaker nowadays. Staved off a world-wide nuclear war, possibly saved the whole human race that time. Then later he talked everybody into serious disarmament. And the atmosphere's improving, climate's coming back, all thanks to him and his staff of experts. So trust him, you hear me, you young rapscallions?" Again she flashed the familiar old Mabel grin.
"Yes, Sis," Dipper said. But to Wendy, he sent a silent message:—I hope she's right. Sounds like Billy Sheaffer really meant it when he said he was going to try to be good!
Hope so, Dip. Man, I'm so sorry I suggested visiting this place! I screwed up bad.
—Wasn't your fault, Wen. You had no idea something like this would—
"Well, well, well!"
Dipper jerked around. A tall, lean man had stepped through the arched opening. He stood straight-backed at least six feet tall, still had a shock of pale hair—pure white now—and his face was care-lined. Bright blue eyes, two of them, and he carried a cane and wore an outlandish outfit, yellow with jet-black trim, a white shirt with a collar but no visible buttons but a very crisp black bow tie. "Dipper! Wendy! It's good to see you." He walked like a much younger man than he appeared to be.
"Billy?" Dipper asked.
"Dr. Bill Sheaffer," Mabel corrected. Billy crossed to her, took her hand, and kissed her cheek. "I told you they'd be back one day," she said to him with a trace of smugness. "Didn't I tell you?"
He squeezed her hand. "You did, over and over again. And I always believed you, didn't I?'
Dipper said, "Man, I have so many questions—"
Billy held up his hand. "Can't answer them," he said. "Because—"
"Yeah, it would meck up the time lines, Mabel told us," Wendy told him. "But tell us at least—what did we do to get here, in this time? We didn't mean to!"
Billy stood beside Mabel, smiling at them. "Well, Red—ah ha ha, look at your face! I thought that'd get a rise out of you. Wendy. Just kidding, I won't do it any longer. I should be adult enough now, I'm seventy-five, so from now on, it's Wendy, all right?"
"All right," she said. She grinned. "You know, for an old dude, you're still kinda handsome."
He bowed—actually did a sweeping, theatrical bow—and said, "I try, my lady. Oh, Pine Tree—you don't mind, do you?—Pine Tree, look at what I can do." He covered his left eye with a palm. "Hold up some fingers, Wendy."
She did.
Billy yelped out one short laugh. "One! And that's still a rude gesture! No hard feelings, though, because I like your moxie, kid. Now—" he covered his other eye. "Again, Dipper, you hold up some fingers. Three fingers! Look at me, I got two eyes now—one's an electronic implant, but it works just like the real one. Man, being able to have 3-D vision and depth perception again is great. All right, let's get you two kids sorted out. Mabel, you'll have to stay here, dear. Are you comfortable?"
"I'm all right," Mabel said. "I got my rock to sit on, and there's knitting in my purse. But before you go—let me hug Dipper and Wendy one last time."
She did and she whispered in his ear, "You go straighten yourselves out now! Don't make your Mabel have to go through what I've gone through, all right? I love you, Dipper."
"I love you, too, Sis," Dipper said, choking up.
Mabel hugged Wendy then, and whispered something to her that Dipper couldn't hear. Wendy glanced at him and said quietly, "I promise, Mabes. It's good to see you."
Then with Billy leading the way, they threaded the needle again, creeping through the narrow passage to the symbol room. Billy held up his cane, and light flared from it, more brilliant by far than Dipper's flashlight.
"Man!" Billy said, turning around in a circle and admiring the cave glyphs. "This brings back so many memories. Old Modoc and his people. This was his contemplation cave. I didn't treat him so good, I'm afraid. I didn't treat anybody very well back in the day. For what it's worth, kids, over the decades I've learned to be a little better. I'm really sorry for what I did to you two back when—well, you remember. Dipper, you were what, twelve? And Wendy fifteen. I was really crazy back then." He laughed, but it was a healthy-sounding laugh. "Still am, but in a better way, I hope. OK, let's do this. Now, one of you pushed the bow tie, am I right?"
"I did," Dipper admitted.
"Mm-hm, thought so, so you read part of my Journals. Or saw the—the word used to be 'movies,' right? Yeah, saw some of the movies. But you also somehow activated the prognosticator. That's a way I had of examining probabilities, chances of my schemes working out. They draw on alternate time-lines, and you both got shunted off the proper rails, with the result that the world outside the cave went on without you for sixty-five years. Mabel's turning eighty-one in a few days. I'll be seventy-five."
"Wait, wait," Dipper says. "If we go back—if we get back on the right track—then—what about your lives during those sixty-five years?"
"I think it'll all get erased," Billy said. "Don't worry, though, Mabel and I won't just blink out of existence. We'll—rewind. We'll go back to the ages we were, and we won't remember any of this. But that's for the best, kid, believe me. Mabel hasn't been happy for almost all of her life, and she deserves to be happy."
"Then you won't, like, be the big peacemaker?" Wendy asked.
"Maybe I will be," Bill said with a shrug. "I hope I will be. I'll ask you two to remember this, because I won't: Let Mabel be my best friend, Dipper. My—well, my Muse, if you want to call it that. Nothing romantic. She ought to have a guy she's in love with to marry, and I hope this time she'll do that and not give up her chance because she's broken-hearted about your disappearing. Well, that won't be a problem, so just be a good brother, OK? And a good sorta-kinda older sister? But whatever else happens, I need Mabel to be my Platonic friend and closest advisor. I have to have her advice and her humor and her chaos to make me—well, whatever I've become over the last half-century and more. Kid, I value your friendship, too, but Mabel—she's one of a kind. OK?"
"I guess," Dipper said. "I won't try to keep her from being your friend. But if you ever hurt her—"
Billy raised his right hand. "I swear I won't. And if I do, come at me with all you got."
"You really wouldn't want that," Wendy said. "'Cause I'd come with him!"
"Ha!" Billy laughed. "Good one, Wendy. Now, here's what you have to do, and you have to do it for yourselves—I can't stay here with you without risking reality folding up like a tesseract and imploding the universe. It's not going to be easy, and you're going to hate doing it at times, but you have to."
"We'll do it, if it'll get us back," Dipper said. "Just tell us."
Billy nodded. "OK. What you're going to do is turn the bowtie, twist it to the right in a half turn, and then push it until it clicks. And repeat those two steps again and again and again, until you see yourselves standing in this cave. Don't push the bowtie to end any segment except that last one—other times, twist it and then press, OK? May take three tries, may take a hundred, but don't give up. Once it's like you're seeing a live movie of yourselves at that moment, then press the bowtie to end it. The picture will go out. You two leave the cave quickly and don't come back. You'll be on the right time track then, and you'll return to your own year somewhere from an hour to a few days after you first entered the cave."
"Why won't we like it?" Wendy asked.
"I'm sorry," Billy said, "but you'll get flashes of other alternate time lines, just possibilities as far as you're concerned. Some of them might make you furious, or break your hearts. But you kids are brave. Keep doing it, all right? Trust me. You'll get there in the end."
"And if we don't make it?" Dipper asked. "If you and my sister don't get your—rewind?"
Billy put a hand on his shoulder. "I'll take care of Mabel for the rest of her life," he said. "I promise you, Pine Tree. I'll tell you this much: We have life-extending technology now. Mabel's been so unhappy with the way her life has gone, she's refused it. She could look and feel thirty years younger than she is, but—just more years of sadness, she says. She's uh, getting ready to go. But if worst comes to worst, I'll never desert her and I'll make her as comfortable and happy as I possibly can."
"You really have changed," Dipper said.
Billy sighed. "Yeah, thanks, kid. I hope the Axolotl agrees. Well—I better leave now. Wish you the best, you two. Dipper, do you mind if I give your girl a kiss on the cheek for luck?"
Dipper glanced at Wendy. "I suppose that will be OK," she said.
He stepped up to her and smiled into her eyes. "Your whole life is ahead of you," he said softly. "And you look so young."
And without warning, he kissed her, just a quick one, on the lips. "Ah-ha-ha! Just for luck, Red!"
She slapped him, not softly, and he threw back his head and his laughter boomed. "She's a keeper, Dipper! Too good for you, but you're what she wants. You take the best possible care of each other. Believe it or not, and you probably won't, but I love you both! So long, and as they used to say in the olden molden days, fare thee well!"
He turned and strode back to the narrow passage, taking his cane and the light with him, and Dipper turned on his flashlight again. "Sorry about that," he said to Wendy.
"Meh, wasn't your fault, dude," Wendy said with an enigmatic smile. "And you know, for such an old guy—he's kinda hot!"