14-Falling to Pieces

Stan Pines clutched both temples and glared at the book as if he could grab is information out of the air and shove it into his own head. "What kinda sense does this make?" he demanded of Ford, who was not present. "I don't understand any of this! Overlapping dimensions, twinned realities, spectrum of realities—gah! And what the heck's a Nightmare Realm? Philosophical existence, no physical beingness? What kinda language is that, anyhow?"

He looked from the journal pages to the tablet paper that Dipper had covered with cryptic phrases and tons of figures. "Let me see, let me see."

Begin with fuel load of at least 90%. DO NOT OVERFUEL, RISK OF RUNAWAY REACTION!

Sequence is crucial.

Begin: Power sequence G, Or, B.

Hr 2:47 Panel top row R1, R2. IMPORTANT: If off by 1 min ABORT. WAIT 2, RESTART.

IMPORTANT: No more than 2 tries.

VITAL: DO NOT MANIPULATE LEVER "ENGAGE"

Hr 2:50: engage DRESONATOR (CONSOLE C, toggle 1-5-2-3

DO NOT ENTER PORTAL CHAMBER!

Wait.

Hope.

"Damn it, how come I didn't get a brain like my brother's? We're twins! Now I wish I'd paid attention in high-school algebra."

In fact, he had on the table a book, Introduction to Algebra, which had belonged to Wendy. She cheerfully admitted that she had barely pulled a C in the class and would probably never use what knowledge she had gained in her life. Stan was trying his best to educate himself, but too often he didn't even remember the mathematical terms, if he had ever learned them to begin with. The equations might as well have been inscribed in a mixture of ancient Greek and Egyptian heroisms. Hierographs. Hieroglyphs, whatever it was.

He still had to go nab some nuclear waste. He knew where he could put his hands on some—that was a downside when the people with the stuff hired a disposal crew that recruited lazy slobs. Not like the gunk was all THAT dangerous. As long as he wore his hazmat suit until he'd pumped it into the containment chamber. However, he could only pick the stuff up on Wenensday midnights. And it was more than a hundred and fifty mile drive each way. That was why he was always like a zombie the next day.

And right now he was dead tired. He shoved the books and papers aside, crossed his arms on the table, and took off his glasses before he leaned forward and rested his head on his forearms, the way he . . . used to . . . goof off . . . in algebra . . ..

Before he knew it, he had dozed off. And within minutes, he was dreaming . . ..

He stood on a featureless dim gray plain, stretching away in all directions. "Where am I, Kansas?" he asked. "And what's this thing?"

He meant the spear he was holding, a shaft taller than he was, a sharp blade at the end like a steel diamond.

Stan turned in a full circle, scanning. The sky was a darker gray than the ground, the horizon was almost unbroken, except in one direction. He could see an interruption in just one place, what looked like a cluster of urban buildings, not skyscrapers exactly, shorter and squatter than that, but structures like downtown Topeka.

Eh, it was better than nothing. Barely. He started to trudge toward the buildings, but in what felt like hours that passed in a minute or so, he got close enough to realize that the buildings weren't buildings at all, but gigantic books, standing on end. Not closed but cracked enough to stand up on their own. They must have been fifty or sixty feet tall.

And something came out of them, something like slithering snakes as long as a school bus.

Shoulder-tall but winding across the plain.

Oh, crap, that was why he had the spear.

The one in the lead was a2 – b2 = (a – b)(a + b).

"I'm bein' attacked by formulas?" Stan yelled.

The first of the things reared to strike, but Stan got the spear up and took out the b squared, causing the whole thing to collapse and scatter.

More were coming, too many of them to fight. Stan grunted, "Face 'em like a man or run like a wimp."

Wimp it was. He turned and ran as hard as he could.

"Somebody help!" he roared.

And there somebody was, hovering right in front of him.

Not somebody, something.

Wearing a big old Abe Lincoln hat and carrying a cane.

"Staneford!" a weird high-pitched voice crowed. "Well, well, well-well-well-well! Been a long time! Did we forget our math? You know, it would amuse me to be your muse again! Want to make a deal? Shake!"

The stick-figure hand extended toward him blazed in blue gaseous flames—

"Yahh!" Stan woke up trying to swat the hand away. He jumped up and spun, expecting to see a swarm of attacking mathematical functions.

No, he was in the top layer of the basement labs, and the only thing behind him was the door leading to the corridor and the elevators and the stairway up.

"Jeeze Louise!" Stan said, breathing deep and trying to will his heart to stop beating so hard. What was so scary about a one-eyed flying triangle? Math, now—math was scary!

He looked down at the desk. Scary and too hard for him. "I'll ask Dipper to help," he told himself. "He reminds me of Sixer. Maybe he'll laugh at me for bein' such a dumb-head. Maybe I should ask Wendy."

Who had told him, "Man, you're welcome to the book. I was lucky to pull a low C in that class. I don't want to see it ever again!"

"Doesn't the book belong to the school?" he had asked her.

"Eh, I marked it all up with notes. Plus by keeping it, I'm saving some lucky student from having to go through it. My good deed for junior year, man!"

No, he'd have to ask Dipper.

But first—first he needed sleep. In his own bed. Preferably without dreams.

He hauled himself upstairs, and just as he closed the vending-machine door behind him, the four kids, Dipper—almost not a kid anymore, really—Wendy, Mabel, and Elise came spilling in from the parking lot, laughing and goofing. Zeus, with his wide gopher brin, was behind them, shepherding them inside.

"Hey, Stan, you're back!" Wendy said. She held up a fuzzy pink-and-purple stuffed something that looked like a platypus or the unholy product of a panda-duck mating. "Look what Dipper won for me!"

"Yeah, it's real, uh—different," Stan said. "Dipper, you got a minute?"

"Sure," he said.

"Elise and I won a whole bag of jewelry!" Mabel said, shaking a plastic bag filled with plastic necklaces, rings, tiaras, and what not. "We're gonna go upstairs and practice looking like queens! Wanna come, Wendy?"

"Sure!" Wendy said. "P.D. and I will critique your looks!"

"P.D.?" Stan asked.

"She's calling it a panda duck," Dipper said with a smile.

"Huh, I was right. Hey, Zeus, you fix that leak?"

"Replaced the pipe and tested it, Mr. Pines! I got the lawn and repainting scheduled for tomorrow. Hey, today I rode the Ferris wheel and never even puked!"

"You're a good man . . . child, Zeus. Look, I got business out of town all day tomorrow and maybe the next day, but you know what to do. You can take Durbsday off. Yeah, yeah, don't even ask, with pay."

"Cool!"

"Zeus, go home. Come downstairs, Dipper."

Down in the lab, Stan said, "Sit down. Now look at these notes you did for me. What do the equations mean?"

"I think they're the way that the Author worked out the time deadlines," Dipper said. "I'm not sure what the instructions mean. Uh—could we go down to the control room for the Portal?"

"You realize that's like the super-secret part?"

"I know but I can't understand the abbreviations and everything unless I'm in the control room and can look around."

"We'll take the elevator."

Down they went, and then they walked the long corridor. Stan switched on the lights. "I'm dumb about stuff like this," he admitted. "Even with all three books and the whole schematic of the thing, I'm still not sure what my brother is tryin' to tell me."

"Can I sit in the chair?" Dipper asked.

"Yeah, knock yourself out."

With the sheets of notes in his right hand, Dipper looked at the controls. It was like slipping into the pilot's seat of a 777—complex and technical. Futuristic, yet strangely old-fashioned, too.

Well, of course. The builder had gone missing thirty years earlier, so the devices were most likely designed by Stanford and built by McGucket. Let's see, let's see . . ..

"Do you know which of these is the main power switch?" Dipper asked.

"Yeah, I've warmed the thing up before. It's this switch, this one, and this one. Just click 'em down and the power comes on in the portal room."

"I think," Dipper said, "that the instructions mean you throw the switches in a certain order. Green, orange, and then blue."

Stan slapped his forehead. "Duh! I wasn't thinkin' colors! See, they work no matter which order you throw them. So the right one, then move to the middle, then to the left one! Backwards to the way you read!"

"Then you have to wait for exactly two hours and forty-seven minutes. Then the top panel, that one—and that row of red switches—are they numbered?"

"Yeah, etched in the metal under them."

"You throw one and two. But you've got only one minute to do that, if you're off the timing, you've got to start the whole process over again."

"And these figures, they—"

"They're how the timing got figured," Dipper said. "Did the second volume help?"

"Yeah, I saw I'd done some wiring wrong. And I didn't know the fuel load I needed. I probably woulda blown the whole place up if I'd managed to get the Portal to activate. Now, this thing here—this is the scanner-thing. One of the red switches turns it on, but it didn't do anything but idle. It's supposed to search through all possible worlds to find the last thing to go through the Portal and bring 'em back. So far, I get just green line with READY underneath it."

"Grunkle Stan? There's something else. I think it's in Journal 1. Can we look at that?"

"Yeah, upstairs. I'll have to bring those books down here before I go for the retrieval."

"Uh, about that," Dipper said. "You have to wait until the last week of August to try. If you start the Portal before then, you won't find your target."

"Last week of Argust?"

"Probably about August 21 or 22," Dipper said. "And then it'll take eighteen hours of scanning. Remember that. Don't get carried away and start early."

"Yeah, I won't."

They went upstairs, and Dipper started to flip the pages of one of the Journals. Looking over his shoulder, Stan said, "Wait! I saw that!"

He was pointing at a silhouette sketch of a triangular figure with one eye and topped with an image of an absurdly tall top hat. "Bill Cipher," Stan read.

"I—can't tell you about that!" Dipper said. "Where did you see him?"

"Just a while back," Stan said. "In a dream. He wanted something. He thought I was my brother, and he offered to shake hands."

"Never do that!" Dipper said. "He wants to take over your mind, to control you! That's why Gru—your brother—wanted to destroy the Portal. He was afraid it would let Bill come into this dimension, and—I shouldn't tell you any of this!"

"Why?" Stan asked. "'Cause I'm too dumb to understand?"

"No," Dipper replied. "No, not at all. But if he shows up in your dreams, never shake hands with him. Never! I know what I'm talking about!"

"I think I woke up first," Stan said. "OK, gotcha, never shake hands with a triangle. Sounds nuts, but I got that—what's with the lights?"

They went out, leaving the two in darkness. "Power failure?" Dipper asked.

"Never happened before."

"Wait, I've got a flashlight in my pocket—"

Across the room a computer screen lit up, giving them minimal illumination. On the screen an oval appeared, an elongated smaller oval within it—like an eye. An eye that Dipper knew too well.

A tinny-sounding speaker cackled. "I see-e-ee you, Pine Tree! I see lots of you! Lo-o-ots of you! Isn't this interesting? So many Pineses, which one should I latch onto? Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! I'll be seeing you!"

Abruptly the computer went dark, and the room went light as the overheads came back on. "What the hell was that?" Stan asked.

He and his great-nephew stared at each other with wide eyes.

"Stan," Dipper said, "I think we've got to go through with the plan as soon as we can. He's closing in."

To be continued