Chapter 8: Small Hadron Collision
(Palo Alto, California: Wednesday, August 12, 1981)
"This," said Mabel, "looks a whole lot like home."
It did, too—a sky just turning blue with a dawning day, a cool morning breeze faintly scented with ocean salt, and twittering birds raising a racket. The trees even looked familiar.
"Pretty close. It's Palo Alto," Dipper told her, craning his neck to look around. "Just across Dumbarton Bridge from Fremont. But where are we supposed to find McGucket?"
"Muh-oh oh," Mabel said with a shrug—her verbal shorthand for "I don't know."
"Think, think, think," Dipper told himself. "First of all, where are we? I mean where in Palo Alto."
"There's some stores up ahead," Mabel said. "We can ask there."
"I think it's too early in the morning for any of them to be open," Dipper said. "Can't be much past seven in the morning. But I suppose it's better than nothing."
The small shopping area was only a five-minute walk. "Hey," Mabel said, perking up and pointing at a big yellow neon M sign, "there's a MacDougal's! Let's go get some breakfast!"
"I don't even know if they served breakfast back then," Dipper said.
But they did. The Egg McDoodle was on the menu, anyway, and Dipper bought three, one for himself, two for Mabel, along with two not-very-good coffees. The usual miracle occurred, and found in his pocket the exact amount of the purchase (no doubt in period-correct bills and coins, too). He and Mabel sat at a table near the front window and ate their breakfast while watching the streets begin to teem with traffic.
Clothing styles hadn't changed that much—not for Dipper, anyway. He found himself in jeans, tan suede shoes ("House Puppies!" Mabel said), and a red shirt. Mabel was in a sleeveless blue top, a knee-length white skirt, and rainbow-stripped leggings. Her verdict on herself was "Pretty cool!"
"Hey, I have an idea," Dipper said as they tossed their wrappers and left the burger place. "Come on!"
He led the way to the little shopping strip, where no sores were yet open, but on the sidewalk outside the row of shops he saw—yes! There stood an aluminum and glass booth. "Pay phone!" he said.
"I don't think I know what that is," Mabel muttered.
They entered the booth—"Smells like pee!" Mabel complained—and Dipper found the phone book, in heavy covers and bolted to the booth wall. It swiveled up and then opened.
"Here we go!" he said, turning to the M's.
"What is that?" Mabel asked.
"It's a telephone directory," Dipper said. "It's got the names of everybody who has a telephone in the whole town."
"No way!"
"MacGodfrey, McGossum, ah-ha! McGucket, F. H. Let's see . . . 1575 Columbus Avenue. Here, I'll need, uh—a dime? I guess a dime."
He picked up the receiver—wow, so heavy—and then reached in his pocket, found the coin, and dropped it in the slot where it jangled for a second before the dial tone cut in. For a moment the dial itself flummoxed him, but he and Wendy had seen lots of old movies with phones in them, and he said, "Huh. You really did dial a phone!"
Mabel watched in fascination as the dial went round and then clicked back into place. "That is totes gooch!" she said. "I want a cell phone that does that."
"No, trust me, you don't. This thing weighs a ton. Shh!"
Her silence was unnecessary. A siren-like error tone sounded and then a recorded voice said, "We're sorry. The number you have dialed is no longer in service."
Dipper hung up the phone and the machine jingled and clattered. Mabel opened the coin return, but Dipper said, "Leave it. We're not supposed to take anything with us."
"It must've melted anyway," Mabel said. "Slot's empty."
Dipper wrote the address in his notebook. "Let's see where this place is."
They asked a traffic cop, who mentioned a couple of streets pointed them vaguely to the west, and they slogged down Escondido as the day grew hotter. They passed an elementary school and then came to a major intersection. "This is Stanford," Mabel said, peering at the street sign. "The policeman said turn right here, didn't he?"
"Yeah, shouldn't be too much further. Come on."
They passed Dartmouth and then came to Columbia Avenue. It had to be a left turn—Columbia dead-ended into Stanford. "I wonder if they named it after Grunkle Stan," Mabel said.
"No, I think it was probably Leland Stanford, who founded—wait, this is 1595 on the left, so McGucket's house should be—huh! Looks like a party."
It wasn't a party, but a garage sale. Six cars parked in its driveway and at the curb. The house was a modest little place, yellow stucco, one story, with an open garage. The scanty lawn held a SOLD sign, and seven or eight people were busy hauling stuff to their cars. "There's Fiddleford!" Dipper said. "Just like he looked in Grunkle Stanford's college yearbook!"
"And the memory player, too," Mabel said.
The lean, bookish-looking man, wearing tan pants, brown shoes, and a white shirt, was helping a woman load a folding treadmill in the back of a pickup. "Hope you get lots of use out of that, now!" he said cheerfully. He had brown hair worn long, shoulder-length. He went back to a table where a trim, attractive young woman sat, counting bills into a cash box, and handed her more bills—
"That's Mayellen!" Mabel said. "She looks so young!"
"Wait, wait," Dipper said. "Fiddleford met her in Gravity Falls. Why is she even here? Oh my gosh, look at that table inside the garage!"
It was a kitchen table, made of aluminum tube legs and a Formica top, and had seen better days. Arrayed on it were five clunky-looking laptops.
"Howdy!" Fiddleford said as they approached. "Look around and make an offer on anything that catches your eye. We're moving permanently to Oregon next Monday, and everything must go!"
"Oregon?" Dipper asked. "Uh, where in Oregon? I—we come from those parts."
Fiddleford chuckled. "Oh, you won't have heard of this place. I got a temporary job there last summer, but now it's turned into a full-time position, so my wife and I are pulling up stakes."
"Are those computers?" Dipper asked, pointing.
"Sure as I'm standing here! This used to be McGucket's Computermajigs, custom-built. I call these here portamacarry machines. You can pick 'em up, fold 'em like a briefcase, and tote 'em near about anywhere. Work on transformers or rechargeable batteries! Gotta warn you, though, when they start to wear out, you can't replace them. But they're goin' cheap, four hundred bucks and take one away!"
"Could we look at them?" Dipper asked.
"Why, sure you can! Go right ahead. 'Scuse me, this lady's looking at a set of encyclopedias."
Nobody else seemed interested in the computers, and Mabel and Dipper poked around alone in the garage. "I think I see what happened," Mabel said. "Grunkle Ford called McGucket to come and help him, he went to Oregon, met Mayellen and married her, and then they decided to move up there permanently."
"You don't know that," Dipper said. "Huh, one of these is probably the laptop. They all look alike, though."
"McGucket Labs," Mabel said, reading a label. "Grunkle Ford told me that for a while there McGucket was in competition with what's his name, Jobs and that guy whose name I never can remember—"
"Jobs and Wozniak," Dipper said.
"Now you listen here to me," McGucket said from right behind Dipper. "I never had any truck with them two scamps! Oh, they devised a far-out little machine, all right, but did you know they got their start with phone freaking?"
"Uh—no," Dipper said. He didn't know what that was, but it sounded sinister.
"True word, they did. And I never cheated anybody out of dimes in my whole life," Fiddleford said. "Oh, by the way, I'm the McGucket of McGucket labs. Name's Fiddleford."
Dipper widened his eyes. "Not Fiddleford Hadron McGucket!" he said.
Fiddleford blinked. "Uh—why, yes. Yes, that's me. You—heard of me?"
"You designed and built these laptops!" Dipper said. "It's an honor to meet you!"
"Why thank you, but—what? Lap-whats? These here are portamacarries, uh—I don't know your name."
"It's Chris," Mabel said helpfully. "Chris Diaz."
"And this is my sister," Dipper said with a glare at her. "Her name's Bonana Diaz."
"Chiquita Bonana Diaz!" Mabel said. "But you can call me 'Chicky.'"
"I'm sorry," Dipper said. "See, I have relatives in the computer business myself, and, uh, they're trying to create a, uh, a light-weight computer that operates on rechargeable batteries, sort of this same idea. They haven't succeeded, but they call the idea a laptop. Because you can put the computer on top of your lap."
"Or your head!" Mabel said. "If you've got long arms and are a touch typist."
"Laptop," Fiddleford mused. "Lap . . . top. . . nah, I don't think that's catchy enough."
Mabel picked up a book that lay on the corner of the table, past the computers. "Hey!" she said. "Lookie here, Charlie! A yearbook from Backuspmore! Is this for sale?"
Fiddleford snapped out of his reverie. "Huh? Uh, no, sorry, that there's my personal yearbook. I pulled it out of a box of books we're sellin', Mayellen—oh, that's my wife, Mayellen—and me. I set it in here so it wouldn't get sold. How do you even know about Backuspmore?"
"We have relatives in New Jersey," Dipper said, frowning in Mabel's direction and shaking his head.
"One of them went to Backupsmore!" Mabel said.
"Yes," Dipper put in hastily. He stressed his words: "But he was there a long time back. He's our great-uncle, so it probably would have been before your time."
"Say," Mabel chirped, "have you invented that mind-control tie they use for President Reagan yet—"
"Zip it," Dipper muttered.
Fiddleford stared at her with wide eyes. "How did you know about—I mean, I have no idea what you mean. I mean, uh—'scuse me." He turned around and hauled down the garage door, closing it with a clatter. Then, looking upset, he said, "How'd you kids even hear that I did some work for the—shoot, I nearly said it! For the, uh, campaign?"
Dipper sighed. "OK, we'll come clean. You worked for an Agency headed by—we won't mention his name, but he was once a professor at Backupsmore. On the side, he advised an official Agency, which specializes in, well, let's say specialized knowledge."
"For specialized purposes," Mabel said. "Wink, wink!"
"But how do you—are you spies?"
"Whaaat?" Mabel asked. "Come on, Doc! I'm too cute to be a spy!" She put her index fingers against her cheeks and gave him her most winning smile.
"Not spies! Just . . . observers," Dipper said, frantically improvising. "We, ah, travel to different dimensions and, uh, observe. For example, we know that you're working in Gravity Falls as the assistant of a man named Dr. Pines."
"Watch out for the Gnomes," Mabel warned. "They'll drive you crazy."
"We're not here to stop you," Dipper said hastily. "Just to observe. Like I said."
"Different dimensions?" Fiddleford asked. He tried to laugh, but it sounded all hollow. "Now, that's impossible! I mean, maybe it's theoretically feasible, but you'd need technology far more advanced than anything we got!"
"But maybe not beyond the reach of a couple of researchers," Mabel said. "If you know what I mean."
"We know you're using advanced technology from a crashed flying saucer," Dipper said. "We don't care. It doesn't matter to us at all. We're simply observers."
"I . . . I think maybe I ought to call the authorities," Fiddleford said, reaching for a dial phone on the desk.
"That won't work," Dipper told him.
Fiddleford held the receiver to his ear and turned pale. "Dead! What did you do to it?"
"Nothing," Dipper said. "You just had it disconnected. Because you're moving next week."
"Oh, yeah, that's right." Fiddleford hung up and scratched his head. "Sellin' the house here and movin' permanently to . . . I'm having some short-term memory lags on account of—never mind."
"You shouldn't have looked into the Gremloblin's eyes," Dipper said. "That messes a man up."
"The what?"
"Never mind," Dipper said. "You wouldn't remember it now, but you'll find out one of these days. Listen, Dr. McGucket, my sister and I—"
"We're Chet and Banana!" Mabel added helpfully.
Wondering what MacDougal's put into their breakfast sandwiches, Dipper said, "She's joking. We're Chris and Bonana. Anyway, we simply want to check out how advanced your portamathingy computers are. Just for our records. We mean you no harm and we'll leave you in peace as soon as we get the information we need. Let us see one in action, and we'll leave and you won't ever hear from us again."
"Not until the summer of 2012, anyways," Mabel said. "Oh, by the way, think about what happens to all computers everywhere when the clock turns over from midnight, December 31, 1999, and it's suddenly 2000."
"I don't understand that at all," Fiddleford said, his voice cracking with anxiety. "It's just th' turnin' of—oh, no. Wait a minute. The computer clocks will all crash!"
"But now you've got time to figure out a fix," Mabel said cheerfully.
Impatiently, Dipper had switched on one of the laptops. It took it a long while to fire up—but then he said, "It's asking for a password, Dr. McGucket."
But Fiddleford was still stuck on the Y2K problem, something he obviously had not considered before. "Problem is the digital register of the year in all the software. Huh! Programmers saved space by just countin' the last two digits—but when the clock turns from 99 to 00, the computer'll think it's 1900 and freeze up tighter'n a duck on a Yukon pond in February!"
"There's the McGucket we know!" Mabel said. "Come on, don't freak out. Remember, you've got nearly twenty years to solve it."
Fiddleford flipped the piece of paper that had the computer price on it—$400 AS IS—and started to scribble. "Thing is, gotta come up with an algorithm—"
"What's the password?" Dipper asked.
"—that will correct the registry—password? Just my name, McGucket. Whoever buys a computermajig then gets to change it to whatever. If I set the parameters—"
Dipper slapped his forehead. "McGucket! Of course." He hurriedly typed in McGucket, and the screen flashed "WELCOME" in green.
"Uh, how do I get it to calculate pi?" Dipper asked.
"Here, you just—" Fiddleford's fingers flickered on the keyboard—"there. Now just keyboard in the number of digits you want. Don't just hit return, or she'll try to go infinite and freeze up on you, though."
"You might want to stand away," Dipper said, and absent-mindedly, Fiddleford wandered off eight or ten steps, still calculating. "Mabel, hold my hand."
She held his left, and with his right forefinger he entered 1000. And then hit Return.
And said, "Jump ba—"
The screen displayed the result of the calculation and then flashed WARNING DIVERSION TO ALTERNATE TIMELINE.
And Dipper finished saying "back" and the whole universe turned inside out.
Or that's what it felt like.
"Where's our next clue?" Mabel asked.
"I . . . don't know. But look over there."
"Wow," Mabel said. "I always wanted to visit Washington!"
Because it was the middle of a muggy night. And they were staring at the dome of the U.S. Capitol, not very far away.
And men in police uniforms were coming toward them.