Calamity Crossroads

17-Breaking News

Evening, and Dipper started a small campfire in the clearing down the trail from the Shack. He'd brought a bedroll—why hadn't this universe included his sleeping bag? Anyway, he unrolled a tarp on a heap of pine needles, picked clean of the lumpy cones and smelling piney. The cones had supplied kindling for the fire, and it crackled and glowed close enough for him to feel the warmth, but low enough to offer no threat of spreading.

Let's see, let's see . . . I used to do this all the time. Why is it so hard? Because in this universe, Bill hasn't been banished? Because here in my head there are so many copies of me, a bunch of them wondering what the heck I'm doing?

Or maybe he was just tense. With an effort, Dipper slowed his breathing and consciously relaxed all his muscles, beginning with his toes and working slowly all the way up to his neck, jaw, even eyelids. He felt the old familiar sinking sensation. It was like floating, with a fluttering of his awareness. This is just me, just me . . . you, all of you, just chill out . . . relax . . ..

Weird. In his head, not through his ears, he heard their voices—

"Where you going?"

"I don't like this. We should stick together!"

"I'm scared!"

"Kid, what do you think you're do—"

I'm here.

Dipper opened his mental eyes and saw around him the Mindscape, the distorted and monochrome vision of reality. Trees floated in mid-air, dangling roots that tangled not only clods of earth but parts of small skeletons, possums possibly, or perhaps rabbits or raccoons. The fire had disassembled itself, the embers and logs drifting upward in a slow-circling spiral. The smoke fell in clumps to the earth and rolled around on the ground.

Normal for the Mindscape.

Guys? Are you there?

No response. A sort of echoing emptiness.

He was alone. Now—if in his true universe, Great-Uncle Ford was still sleeping. Dipper concentrated.

The Mindscape seeped across multiple realities. Dipper didn't know how many, but Ford's Journals had told him that universes with, what, clones or versions of the same people were usually . . . and then, Bill Cipher had certainly spied on multiple realities from the Nightmare Realm. Anywhere and any when that had representations of triangles and eyes allowed him to see . . ..

Where in here would Great-Uncle Ford be?

Dipper? Am I dreaming? Where are you?

—Wendy? Wendy, is that you?

Dipper! Where are you? What's happened to you? You've been gone for like a week and nobody—

—Are we married?

Dude! Since last August, yes!

—Listen, get in touch with Great-Uncle Ford and tell him I'm looking for him in the Mindscape! He knows what's going on, but I've got stuff he has to know!

Right away, man! Hang in there!

Time, time . . . Dipper willed it to pass differently here. To give his Wendy the chance to get his Ford—

Everything blurred as if consumed in a rapid, condensing, blue-glowing fog. And then it re-formed, not as things actually were, but in the distorted, warped Mindscape—

A . . . classroom?

A whiteboard at the front of the room and standing before it, in a lab jacket—

Oh. Great-uncle Stanford's Institute. And Ford was ready to . . . teach.

"Mason? Are you here?"

"Here," Dipper said.

"I . . . can't see you. It's hard to hear you."

Dipper concentrated hard. "Is this better?"

Ford blinked at him. "There you are. You're very blurry. What do you think of when you hear the tune 'Londonderry Air?'"

"Huh? Dipper blinked. "Uh . . . the Lepricorn?"

"Correct. I had to check. Can you see the board?"

"Yes," Dipper said. "Uh, are we in one of your classrooms?"

"Close. It's set up like one. Observe, please."

Ford turned to the whiteboard and with a set of dry-erase markers he drew a series of circles, barely touching each other, looking rather like links in a chain—black, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. Beneath the yellow one he drew an arrow pointing toward it. "These are neighboring dimensions," he said. "There are many more, sub-infinite but multitudinous. This is just a schematic."

"OK," Dipper said.

"I am currently here in the yellow one. You belong here. The other Masons are from a scatter of dimensions that do not quite touch. Now the problem is that somehow all the Masons from a great many dimensions that share certain qualities with the purple ones have been slipped into this dimension." Using the red marker, Ford sketched an arrow pointing to the purple circle. "Except you are not bodily there—not in your own body, I mean. Your consciousness has been crammed into the mind of this purple dimension's Mason."

"I know that," Dipper said. "But in this one, he's six years older than Mabel—she's twelve, he's eighteen."

"The variants among the realities account for such deviations." Ford held up a finger. "I strongly believe that all the affected dimensions share versions of yourself, but also one other thing. Don't say this aloud, but look."

Ford sketched in another figure—a yellow equilateral triangle.

Dipper understood. "I get it."

"All right. One of the Masons has a . . . current connection with this. To resolve the problem, first we must get you all together in one physical reality. Then we must expel the problem from the affected Mason. And finally we must open pathways from the temporary reality to all the home dimensions for the Masons."

"Is that even possible?"

"It is." Ford hesitated. "I strongly believe it is, I should say. You must realize that the means I used to visit the Multiverse is not the only method of interdimensional travel."

"I know that," Dipper said. "There's a magical dimension where, uh, scissors can cut open passages—"

"Yes! Though that one has become, um, instable. And in another a researcher has created a portal gun, yes, and in another the harmony among three resonating gemstones can effect a similar, well, call it portal passage. Very well." Ford took a deep breath. "I am calling in a number of favors to try this, Mason. There is a pocket dimension—it has normal Earth gravity and atmosphere, but no human population, and in fact only one planetary body. Alert all the Masons that they will find themselves there within the next day. They will be there—you will be there—in body as well as consciousness. This alone is taking a tremendous risk."

"Because—"

"Because you must not touch each other!" Ford turned toward the board and put an X through the yellow and green circles. "If two of you are sufficiently alike, then touching would annihilate you both. And that could have catastrophic cascade effects on both your dimensions."

"So—what happens when—?"

"You must be sure to remain no closer than ten feet from any other Mason. I am endeavoring to ensure that. All of you must keep that distance," Ford said. "I will be able to observe the, ah, gathering. Once you're there—just wait."

"What?"

"I'm sorry, Mason. I have a plan, but I can't explain it to you. One of you must not know, and therefore none of you should know. What will happen won't take long. You must trust me."

Dipper bit his lip. "Great-Uncle Ford, look at me. Take off your glasses. I want to see your eyes."

"I understand," Ford said.

Suddenly he stood, or seemed to stand, only a few feet from Dipper. "There. You see? I'm relieved that your eyes are human as well." The lighting flickered. "We're losing our point of contact. Be ready. Tell the others—"

Dipper woke up suddenly, and the voices came crowding back into his head, what happened? Where did you go? What's the plan?

The campfire had burned to orange-red embers. Dipper got up and scratched dirt over it, covering it, smothering in.

And wishing that the voices would all shut up, shut up, shut up.

In the depth of that night it happened. Dipper felt the change in air, a sudden sensation that a chill blast had just cooled the tepid air, as if a window had been opened to a north wind. By the time he pushed himself out of bed, though, Dipper realized that he was no longer in his room. Or maybe not even in the world.

He stood in a fog, a literal fog, not heavy but pearly and thin, H couldn't see the floor beneath his bare feet, or any walls or ceiling. It was like the Mindscape, a little—if the Mindscape had been emptied of all its contents. "Uh—Great-Uncle Ford?"

The pale light seemed to be increasing. "Guys?" he asked both aloud and mentally.

Wait, wait—no voices in his head, anyway, but . . . dim gray forms in the mist, some taller, some shorter. They gained a kind of solidity, becoming clearer. "Hey!" he shouted, and at the same moment he heard a dozen echoes of his call—but in slightly different voices. "I think we're somewhere else," he called.

"I'm, uh, scared!"

That voice came from somewhere straight ahead, and it sounded like a much younger Dipper.

Made sense. At eighteen, Dipper would have gone through all sorts of threats, from ghosts to interdimensional demons. His younger selves still had a lot to experience. They had a right to be scared.

Oh, yeah. And one of them was currently Bipper . . . a Dipper infected with the mind of Bill Cipher. Bill as he had been in the past, not as he would be after Weirdmageddon, or whatever version of it would happen in alternate timelines.

Now they were aware of being together, and no longer just mentally. "Hey," one of the older ones only about ten feet away said to Dipper, "you know what dimension yours is?"

"It's 46'\," he said.

"Mine's 46^\," the other said. "We must be pretty close—whoa!" He had taken a step or two nearer, but bounced back about a foot, blinking.

"What's wrong?'

"Don't know. The air congealed or something—"

"To keep us from touching. That's dangerous. If, uh, duplicates form very close realities touch, they annihilate each other."

"Oh, yeah, that's in the—"

"Shh!" When his double looked puzzled, Dipper said, "We're not all on the same time line. Some of us haven't found the things yet."

"What things?" called a twelve-year-old Dipper from some distance away. The others started to clamor too.

"Hang on!" Dipper yelled. "Come on, guys! You know there have to be rules—"

"Now!" boomed a familiar voice, seemingly from directly overhead. One of the more distant Dippers called, "Great-uncle Fort? Is that you?"

In the center of the crowd something flashed, and when the burst of pinkish light faded, there stood a figure in a red bodysuit—and wearing a red full-face mask.

The disguise was undoubtedly hand-made and showed some expert tailoring, but there was no way Dipper wouldn't recognize Mabel.

"Hi, guys!" yelled his sister. "Whoa! It's like we're not twins, we're twenty-plets! Aw, you look so cute! Gotta give you a hug!"

"No!" Dipper yelled.

But Mabel had already grabbed the Dipper nearest her and had thrown her arms around him. "What are you, about thirteen?"

"Fourteen!" the startled Dipper yelped. "Uh—are you—"

"I'm the Mysterious Stranger! Hey, look straight at me! Nope, you're OK. You sit down and stay down until I tell you to get up. Gotta keep track!"

Somehow Mabel could pass through the invisible barriers that kept the Dippers separated. She made her way toward him, hugging and looking at each duplicate until she reached him. When she got close, she said, "Look at me. OK, clear." She murmured softly, "You're my Dipper, aren't you?"

"Yeah, I think so."

She whispered in his ear: "What's a weakness of the Gnomes?"

He whispered back, "Leaf-blowers and dog whistles."

"And after an A-S-H?"

"Two pats."

"Let me clear these others. Grunkle Ford says we have about seventeen minutes."

Which worked out to roughly one minute per duplicate. Mabel made her way down another row, then headed away, toward the younger Dippers. As far as Dipper could tell—it was hazy here, though not crowded with gray-scale bits of the real world, like the Mindscape—the final row of four, maybe six, figures were the twelve-year-olds.

Mabel hugged two, then finished up the row. She went back to the second one in that row and threw him to the ground. "Hey, no!" he screamed, then laughed hysterically as she aggressively tickled him. "Stop it!" wailed the Dipper.

"Then get out of him!"

"You're spoiling everything!"

"This summer's your last chance!" Mabel yelled. "I'm bigger and stronger! Give it up, Bipper!"

From somewhere overhead a beam of searing light hit the struggling pair—and then Dipper saw a glowing yellow triangle somersaulting through the air.

Mabel jumped away and came running. "I gotta get to you! Signal me!"

Dipper stood and she threw herself on him. "Get ready, this may hurt!"

Staggering under the impact, Dipper asked, "What—?"

And then it felt as if all his bones had broken at the same instant.

To be continued