2: In No Time

(2012)

In a nondescript and rather shabby warehouse in between time and eternity.

"How did it time-go?" asked Dundgren.

Lolph, who had stripped to his skivvies and was donning his TPAES uniform, said, "I hope I impressed the Pines twins with the gravity of the situation."

"I still think Blendin should've been fired a long time ago. Out of a cannon, preferably."

"We need him. You know what the Doctor said—he could foresee a million possible time-lines, and only in the one that Blendin will is going to has taken the twelve-year-old twins from the bus will the Earth survive without spinning into chaos. And since we are human—mostly human—"

"I know," Dundgren said. "We depend on the Earth's survival so we don't fade from existence. You don't need to explain that to me as though we had an audience who needed exposition."

"Are the time-barriers still holding?"

"For the time-time being. We shouldn't have thought we could hang on through Time Baby's glacier nap. Only nobody wanted Blendin back. You know if the twins don't succeed in this time-quest, we won't have another chance. The time-portal possibilities are rapidly sealing—"

"I know all that!" Lolph said. "But wait. Who told you?"

"The Doctor."

"Strange."

"Whoa!" Dipper said. "You know when we are?"

"I know where we are," Mabel said. "There's the Shack! Only it looks kinda beat up. And way small. And Waddles's sty—"

"Hasn't been built yet, Mabel," Dipper said. "We're somewhere during Weirdmageddon! I mean, look up at the orange sky! Doesn't that tell you something?"

Mabel looked decidedly grumpy. "My great-great-something-grandson sent us back into the middle of that mess and didn't warn us?" Mabel said. "Oh, I'm gonna give him such a time out. Whoa, Dip, look at us. Brobro, we're all raggedy!"

True—the twin teens wore similar outfits, tattered jeans spattered with oil, mud, and maybe worse stuff, ripped and stained shirts with missing buttons hanging open over stained tee shirts, and ski caps with holes that let their hair bristle out in clumps. "Must be the holoprojectors," he said. "I guess this will make us blend in with the refugees."

"Should we check out the Shack?" Mabel started forward.

Dipper grabbed her arm, holding her back. "No! Definitely not!" Dipper struggled to find the words. "We shouldn't even be here. We could screw up the whole time-line if we got caught. And think about this: if Grunkle Stan sees us like this—sixteen years old—it's gonna make him freak. Or anybody else we know—"

"Here comes somebody!" Mabel said."Hide!"

The light was bad, maybe fortunately. The orange sky glared down, making colors weird and muted. The twins crouched in some bushes, holding their breath, as a tall figure and a shorter one came hurrying up to the Shack. The tall one carried a baseball bat in his right fist, and the shorter one clutched his left hand—

"OMG!" Mabel said in Dipper's ear. "It's Pacifica!"

Dipper blinked. "She looks so pathetic—cute, but pathetic!"

"My parents," Pacifica was pleading in a broken voice. "Dad's face was all messed up—horrible—and then the bat-things came and took him and Mom—and, and they almost got me—"

"We'll look for your parents when we can," Stan said gruffly.

"Wow," Dipper whispered. "He looked so much older back then!"

Pacifica, wearing a roughly-made garment sewn from a potato sack—and barefoot, her legs and feet striped with bloody scratches, her dirty hair straggly and tangled—wailed, "I'm so scared!"

Stan paused on the porch and sat down on the step. He gave the twelve-year-old Pacifica a reassuring hug. "I'm worried, too," he growled. "That triangle guy has Dipper and Mabel somewheres, too, and my brother. But my brother fixed up the Shack so nothin' bad can get in. You'll be safe here for a while, anyways. Gotta warn you, though—there's some monsters, I guess you'd call 'em, sheltering with us, too. They ain't so bad, though, not compared to that yellow nacho-chip freak. Come on, Pacifica, chin up. You're a Northwest, remember. You gotta be tough."

Pacifica wiped her eyes with her forearm. "Mr. Pines, I'm so sorry for all the mean things—"

"Ah, forget it," Stan said. "I like gals with spunk! Come on in and meet the gang. And brace yourself!"

"Stan's really a great guy," Dipper said. "Sometimes I forget."

"I wish I could hug Pacifica," Mabel murmured. "She looks so miserable."

"We couldn't let her see us," Dipper reminded her. "Come on—we have to find out just when this is, what day of Weirdmageddon."

They made their way toward town, dodging among the woods beside the road, then ducking from one place of cover to the next. They glimpsed the Falls—turned red as blood, and pouring up into the sky—and kept having to take cover as winged eyeballs flew overhead. "This is so sick!" Mabel said. "I'm so mad at Bill Cipher right now!"

"No," Dipper said, gazing into the distance. "In fact, you're not. Right now I think you're pretty happy. Look over there!" He pointed.

"What am I looking at?" Mabel asked, shading her eyes.

"Between the cliffs, see?"

"That big pink ball thingy—oh, wait!" She slapped her forehead. "Mabel Land! I must be in there. I was so childish!"

"OK," Dipper said, "We busted you out on the fourth day of Weirdmageddon—"

"I was in there for like a week!"

"I think time passed at a different rate inside the bubble. Anyway, as I was saying, we busted you out—"

"Sorry to contradict you, Brobro, but if I remember correctly, and I always do, I busted you guys out. On the back of Waddles the Great!"

Beginning to sound a little annoyed, Dipper said, "Whatever—shh! Hide! Quick, get down!"

The twins dropped to their stomachs in a fortunately dry and overgrown ditch, peering out through dry, dead weeds. From the street came a strange sound of friction, as though a heavy bag of wet cement was being shoved along the pavement. A grating, deeply annoyed male voice was saying, "Come on, somebody, just get into my mouth! Is that such a hard thing to do?"

Something bulky and sweaty hauled itself past—a scowling giant head attached at the crown to a muscular arm, which reached out, gripped the earth, and dragged the monster along. It was heading toward—

"The mall!" Dipper said. "It's chasing someone—oh, no, that's me!"

The twins saw the sweaty head thing creeping toward a fleeing boy—Dipper, but twelve years old. "Aw, you were a cute little kid!" Mabel whispered.

Dipper closed his eyes, feeling a sharp and bitter pang. He had a flashback to what happened in the Dusk2Dawn that summer of 2012, when an irritable Robbie had ragged on him, and then Wendy, his secret crush, had defended him in the worst way she possibly could: "Come on, leave him alone. He's just a little kid. "

Just a little kid. And now that he was sixteen and watching himself as a twelve-year-old running from a cannibalistic monster head, he knew what she had seen in him back then, and he ached with shame and regret. Wait, though, he remembered this—this was when he fled inside the mall, scared and hungry, and—

"Wendy's in there," he whispered to Mabel. "She and Toby Determined!"

The monstrous head pursued the younger Dipper into the mall, failed to break open the door, and turned away, discouraged and grumbling. Fortunately it lurched directly away from the twins. "Funny," Dipper said. "I remember him so well, but his voice sounds a little different."

They darted across the street, and Mabel pointed to the sky and said, "There's the Fearamid! Remember?"

"I still have nightmares," Dipper reminded her.

They found a back way into the mall and even watched from the derelict food court as Wendy led the young version of Dipper to the emergency stairway that led up to the roof. "Man," Mabel whispered, "if Wendy could see you the way you are now—you two would be perfect for each other! I mean, she'd probably run away with you and get married right now if you—"

"Don't tempt me," Dipper said. "Focus, Sis. Focus."

They snuck up the stairs and then hid behind the air-conditioning unit, eavesdropping as Dipper confessed to Wendy that he didn't think he could defeat Bill again, because he didn't have Mabel this time. And Wendy's pep talk—they had to find Mabel, team up, and beat Bill. And Dipper's realization that the big orb over between the cliffs must be where Mabel was—there was a shooting-star emblem on it—but how to get there?

Then they heard Wendy's defiant, confident, "I think I have an idea" as she looked down at the Discount Auto Sales lot.

"Oh, man," Dipper whispered to Mabel as they watched the younger Wendy and Dipper hurry down the stairs. "We're off now to hijack that tricked-out police cruiser! And Wendy's gonna drop-kick Li'l Gideon! And then we have that chase to get to you in Mabel Land!"

"Let's go watch!" Mabel said.

Again Dipper grabbed her arm to restrain her. "We have to find whatever Blendin stashed or dropped here, remember?"

"Who's to say it's not up there on the cliffs? Come on, Broseph! Man up!"

They didn't quite make it to the used-car lot in time to see the epic drop-kick—they kept having to dodge lurking, prowling monsters—but they did hear Gideon's high-pitched squeal. A moment later they crouched as first Dipper and Wendy roared out of the lot in the souped-up police black-and-white, pursued by Gideon's furious troop of post-apocalyptic Discount Auto Warriors. They found a vehicle that Wendy had bypassed and the Road Warriors had ignored—a humble, battered yellow VW bug.

"Climb in," Dipper said.

Mabel struggled to push past him. "Let me drive!"

"Can you hotwire a car?" Dipper demanded.

That stopped her. She gave him a wild glare. "No, and neither can you!"

"Wrong," Dipper said, pulling out some wires and crossing them. The engine coughed to life. "I learned that skill from Wendy," he said. "Part of what you call our mental voodoo. Seat belt! And here we go."

The banged-up little wreck wasn't very fast, and it lagged badly in the chase. They swerved around the horrible sweaty-head monster, who had finally swept some victims—car and all—into its mouth and was furiously chomping on them. They dodged the madness balls, all except for two. Mabel briefly transformed into her uncute self from the Mindscape, Dipper grew a hole in his chest, and then they were normal again, and next they became conjoined twins, two heads, three arms, and three legs, making driving awkward and complicated.

But they pushed through the madness field, took the long way around the chasm, saw the Road Warriors driving off in a cloud of dust to head off Bill's eyebats, and then ditched the Bug, which died anyway as they got close to the cliff overlooking the ancient railroad bridge and the Mabel bubble.

They hid and watched younger Dipper and Wendy and Soos join hands "for Mabel!"

Mabel reached out and put her arm around her twin. "Dip," she said hoarsely, "thank you so much. I just never knew."

"Sis, you always know. Sometimes you and me, we forget a little, that's all."

They lay stretched out on their stomachs again. Something buzzed, and Dipper reached into his pants pocket. The time-travel gizmo was vibrating but without sound. He pressed the round button, and in his spectacles he suddenly saw a pulsating, glowing point of pure blue-white light. "I think it's here, whatever we're looking for! " Dipper said.

"Yeah, I see it too! I'm gonna get me a pair of these cool specs when this is over! Think of the gaming possibilities!" Then she grunted. "Uh-oh. Dipper, the signal—I think it's coming from inside Mabel Land!"

She was right. It was somewhere in that hyperglycemic, psychedelic, wacked-out wonderland. "Oh, man," he groaned. "I so do not want to go back in there!"

However, they did not have to. Before either of them could budge, Mabel Land exploded like a bursting balloon, and a leaping, giant Waddles flew twenty feet over their heads. They scrambled to conceal themselves as Soos, Mabel, Dipper, and Wendy landed, Waddles shrank to his normal size, and fallout from Mabel Land drifted down over them. They watched the younger versions of themselves set off on the long trek down the cliff-side road and back to town.

"Huh," Dipper said. "Time passes differently in there, 'cause we were in for like, a whole day. I was right."

"I still see the glittery light," Mabel said, pushing herself up once the others were out of sight. "I think it's fallen in the woods somewhere over here."

They had to hurry—a dark cloud of eyebats, probably attracted by the bursting of Mabel's bubble, came streaming their way. They pushed through brush and froze when Dipper heard a voice: ". . . Sartre postulated that every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance."

A second voice answered, "Totally righteous, bro!"

And the first said, "I know!"

Mabel burst out from cover before Dipper could stop her. "Xyler! Craz! Guys, quick! Over here, hurry, into the brush!"

Sounding delighted, Xyler said, "Dude, look! Mabel totally survived!"

Craz was just as overjoyed: "I know, bro! And she's become more bodacious than ever!"

"These guys," Dipper groaned.

The two radical and brightly colored young men hurried into the underbrush. Mabel shoved them down flat. "Lie still!"

The bats wheeled in, circling, obviously sizing up the situation. They whirled three or four times, apparently failed to spot the fugitives from Mabel Land, and then sped off in a flock back toward the Fearamid. "OK," Mabel said. "I think it's safe. How the heck did you guys live through all that?"

"The confetti from the explosion totally cushioned our fall!" Xyler said.

"Far out, right?" chimed in Craz. The two high-fived.

"But you guys aren't real!" Mabel said. "I mean, you're just my dream guys!"

"Uh-oh!" Craz said. "I think somebody has a major crush on us, Xyler!"

"We love you too, Mabel! You're our dream girl!" Xyler said. They couldn't talk without exclamation points, Dipper noticed.

"Hey," Dipper said, "I don't want to break up the party—"

"Hey, ho, look, Xyler! It's Dippy Fresh!" Craz said.

"It is not Dippy Fresh!" Dipper snarled. God, how he hoped that Dippy Fresh had not survived the disintegration of Mabel Land! "It's me, Dipper!"

"My man Dipper!" Xyler said. "Bro, I hope you're not too bummed by our being all medieval legal on your butt. We were just doing our job!"

"But you're imaginary!" Mabel said. "I can't figure out how come you guys didn't vanish."

"Oh, that," Craz said. "Every living thing must survive according to immutable imperatives."

"Whoa, dude! Nietzschean!" Xyler exclaimed. "High five!"

Dipper rubbed his eyes. "And in English, that means-?"

"We can't, like, return to the Mindscape—"

"From whence we came, dude!"

"—until we fulfill our most totally righteous imperative!"

"Which is to give Mabel this!" Xyler handed Mabel a small cardboard box, about the size of a wallet. "Oh, and now we gotta motivate, Mabel. Gonna miss you."

"Last hug?" Craz asked.

Mabel shook her head. "Oh, you guys. Come here."

They faded to nothing while she hugged them.

"You took that well," Dipper said.

"I think I just outgrew them," Mabel said a little sadly. She sniffled a little and then opened the box. Something inside had been wrapped in tissue paper. She unwrapped it. "Huh. A key-card dealy with Blendin's photo on it."

The photo, showing Blendin with the hair Mabel had time-wished for him, moved, and a tiny, high-pitched voice issued from the card: "Attention! This card is not in the possession of its rightful owner! Summon the Time-Law Enforcement Agents immediately!"

"Wow," Dipper said. "Fake Blendin doesn't stammer! Still sounds a little like the kid in Nick and Shorty, though."

"Attention!" the card squeaked again.

"Oh, shut up." Mabel put the card into the box, and the noise ceased. "Fat lot of good this does us!"

"Wait a minute," Dipper said. "Here's something else. Look at the paper it was wrapped in."

"Oh, man, one of those deals?" Mabel asked, looking at the penciled set of numbers and dashes.

"No, no, this might be good," Dipper said. "I think it's a simple A1Z26 substitution, like that letter Blendin hid, uh, I guess the word should be 'sent' to us from 1883. Which means that if Xyler and Craz were supposed to give this to you specifically, to Mabel, like they said, then Blendin not only wrote it, but wanted us to find it."

"You're giving me a brain ache! I need some ice cream," Mabel complained.

"First let's get a little deeper in the woods. We need a place to figure this out."

They found a deadfall of trees, the victims of some past windstorm, that had fallen together and formed a little cave-like opening, maybe five feet tall and ten deep. They crept into the shelter of this. From time to time they heard disturbing, distant sounds: screams, maniacal laughter, the bellows of unearthly creatures. Dipper stared at the paper, murmuring to himself: "I-F-A-um, N . . . Definitely a cipher."

"Yeah, yeah," Mabel said, her hands on her cheeks. "I might as well not be here for the boring part."

"You had to be here," Dipper told her with a smile. "Blendin told the guys to give it to you, not to us. You get it, I solve it. Mystery Twins."

"Mystery Twins," she said. "That's the one thing that never gets old."

Dipper patted her cheek. "OK, let me work on this. If I can solve it, and I think I can—maybe we'll know where we have to travel next." Dipper reached into his pocket and produced a pen. "Hey, look. Now if I just had some paper—wait, here's a little pocket notebook. Huh, the TPAES guys think of everything."

Mabel sighed in an exaggerated way and leaned back on the leaf mould, cross-legged, while Dipper began to click the pen as he stared at the figures on the paper:

9-6-1-14-25-15-14-5-6-9-14-4-19-20-8-9-19-20-1-11-5-9-20-20-15-13-1-2-5-12-1-14-4-4-9-16-16-5-18-16-9-14-5-19

8-5-12-12-15-20-23-9-14-19-1-12-12-9-19-12-15-19-20-2-9-12-12-3-9-16-8-5-18-4-9-19-9-14-20-5-7-18-1-20-5-4-20-9-13-5-2-1-2-25

20-8-5-20-9-13-5-19-17-21-1-4-23-9-12-12-20-9-13-5-5-18-1-19-5-13-5-9-6-20-8-5-25-3-1-20-3-8-13-5

9-6-25-15-21-19-21-18-22-9-22-5-4-20-8-5-5-14-4-15-6-20-8-5-23-15-18-12-4-25-15-21-3-1-14-6-9-14-4-13-5-1-7-1-9-14

23-8-5-14-23-5-14-4-25-3-5-12-5-2-18-1-20-5-19-8-5-18-20-23-5-12-6-20-8-2-9-18-20-8-4-1-25-1-20-20-8-5-12-15-3-1-12-13-1-12-12

9-6-9-1-13-14-15-20-20-8-5-18-5-12-15-15-11-6-15-18-1-20-9-13-5-1-14-15-13-1-12-25-1-14-4-1-3-12-21-5

9-13-21-19-20-7-5-20-15-21-20-15-6-20-9-13-5-4-15-4-7-5

9-6-25-15-21-4-9-4-14-15-20-19-21-18-22-9-22-5-20-8-5-5-14-4-15-6-20-8-5-23-15-18-12-4-14-5-22-5-18-13-9-14-4