At the end of the stairs, Dipper and Wendy took an elevator down to another room. The elevator would have needed a code, probably, except the doors were wide open. Someone's just been here, Wendy thought.

Many rows of monitors lined the room, leading down the hall to a desk and a door to the right of it. She hadn't expected anything special to ever be of that vending machine, but it explained why it was never replaced.

"Whoa..." Dipper said. "All this time, this has been underneath the Shack, and we've never known."

"And there's more." Wendy pointed to the door ahead of them, and to a window where that blue light seemed to still be coming from.

"Wow."

Wendy walked up to one of the screens. It showed an image of Scuttlebutt Island. Since is was night, Wendy figured it was a live feed. "Dip, check this out," she called him over. "Secret cameras."

Dipper furrowed his eyebrows. "That's really, really creepy." He turned to the other monitors. "Okay, now I also really do think it's Stan we're down here with. Look at what the cameras are on. The Gravity Falls Prison, Gideon's house, the Tent O' Telepathy, Pacifica's mansion... Soos's abuelita's house, the entrance to the author's bunker, the Gravity Falls Museum of History... Hey, the Mystery Shack is here too. Why do you think Stan needs to watch over the Shack while he's in it?" Dipper raised his eyebrows while questioning Wendy.

"Probably," Wendy told him, while looking at another video feed, "just in case the government agents come back. Look." She pointed to the screen, which was of some sort of government HQ. There was a giant picture of the town of Gravity Falls on the screen in the government room, the Mystery Shack circled.

"Well that explains why Stan was so nervous when the government agents arrived. He didn't want them finding out about his secret." Dipper sighed.

"What's the sigh for?" Wendy asked. She continued looking around the room. Spider webs were in the corners of a few of the monitors. Some pressure gauges were nailed to pipes on the wall.

"I just can't believe he's been lying to us. He told us that he wasn't hiding anything! It's annoying because I... It's hard to trust someone who keeps surprising you like this!"

"Dip... I mean, I've never known about any of this, and I've lived here my whole life. You still have the memory erasing machine?"

Dipper nodded. "Yeah... why?"

"Well, I mean... McGucket made that machine so that people didn't have to live with the burden of remembering creepy things, scary things, failures, and stuff like that. That was thirty years ago, dude. Stan may not have been working alongside McGucket then, but he's been working on this for a long time. He's had to hide it for just as long, and it probably hurts him a lot to have to keep secrets from us... But he just wants the best for everyone." Wendy put her hand on Dipper's arm. "I know he does."

Dipper swung one of his legs back and forth. "That makes sense... Do you think I should ask him about it?"

"Let him come to you," Wendy told him. "He'll come around. Besides, we're here. He's gonna find out at some point."

"True." Dipper glanced back at the monitor of the History Museum. "I wonder if Stan knows about the Blind Eye Society."

"Probably," Wendy shrugged. "I bet he almost got his memories erased countless times, if he's been involved for the supernatural for a long time. And hey, would that mean he knows about McGucket helping the author?"

"Yeah." Dipper walked down the isle of videos of the town, stopping fairly close to the end of the room. "Yeah, there's one here of the junkyard, pointed right at McGucket's house."

"Gee, I—" Wendy began, but stopped. The sound of the door being opened interrupted her. "Dipper! Hide!" she hissed. "Go, go!"

The two hid on opposite sides of the room, near the middle. They were pressed up against the walls and the sides of some of the machinery.

Wendy looked at Dipper, putting her finger up to her lips.

"Finally... finally, we're getting there."

Dipper's eyes widened. "Stan," He mouthed.

Wendy nodded as Stan continued speaking. "Only half-way there, but the portal should be ready before the end of the summer. If only there was a way to get it working faster..." Stan stopped in front of the monitor directly next to Wendy. Wendy froze. "Good, good, still nobody watching. It's so close..." Then, Stan began walking back towards the stairs. He said "It's so close," a few more times, until Wendy heard the vending machine door open and slam closed.

Wendy hesitated to move for at least another minute after Stan left. When she did, she went and stood right next to Dipper. "So... are we gonna go down, now?"

"I think we are." Dipper and Wendy walked to the end of the room, side by side, where the portal awaited them.