Story 3: The Great Escape
Welcome back, students of the timelines. I am Mr. Mondragon, an AI tasked with preserving and understanding the entire world history of the people of Earth throughout all of time. I will be your guide as we consider the events and ponder the possibilities surrounding the American Crisis of 2049. Together, we will marvel at mysteries and wonders, we will cheer for beloved heroes, and we will learn of forgotten sacrifices. There are many stories still waiting to be told. These are the stories from another time.
During the peak of PJ's struggle to restore the timeline, Phineas and Ferb go missing while conducting their own investigation of the change. What happened? How did they just vanish and reappear? That is the focus of today's story.
If you'll remember, the timeline began showing changes after the Conspirium's move to discredit George Washington and President Isabella Flynn by portraying them as palindromophobic. From that point on, the alternate timeline replaced the original one. Like a train being switched to a different set of tracks, any time travelers who departed for the future between the night of the Cincinnati Society Gala and the EMP would have advanced down the flow of time in that alternate timestream and ended up in that alternate future.
Danville, The United North American Kingdom
20 years after the EMP
Three thousand feet above the gleaming Danville skyline, a time machine popped into existence and immediately plummeted to the ground.
Ferb quickly reacted. Deploying the vehicle's thrusters, the machine settled into a hover safely over the city.
"That's strange." Phineas scanned the area from the cockpit. "This is Danville, right? What happened to our building?"
Summertime Industries, the brothers' company, was supposed to be headquartered right where they sat. Being the location they had time-jumped from, they should be in the exact same spot, yet the two-hundred-thirteen story building was apparently no longer standing. Hence the sudden drop, there being nothing to support them.
Phineas double-checked the dashboard. "This is the right time," he puzzled. "And place. Hmm."
Before he could pause to think, a set of alarms began to ring. Multiple bogeys were approaching. Ferb gripped the steering wheel cautiously as Phineas glanced out the windshield to catch a glimpse of the oncoming vehicles.
Black flying cars displaying a foreign symbol Phineas and Ferb did not recognize surrounded the time machine, forming a blockade. A bullhorn rang out from one of them. "Attention, time machine. This is an unauthorized time travel zone. Land immediately and exit the time machine. This is your last warning."
Phineas caught his step-brother's eye. "Unauthorized?" he quizzically hummed. "Do you have any idea what they're talking about?"
Ferb shook his head.
"I guess that means the timeline really has changed," Phineas reasoned. "We'll have to find out how and why." Choosing the most direct method, Phineas rolled down his window. "Excuse me, do any of you happen to know what caused the timeline to change?"
To his surprise, the dark vehicles responded with a whooshing sound as a missile was fired directly at his and Ferb's machine.
"Whoa!" Phineas held on for dear life as Ferb swerved to evade the missile. "Now that was uncalled for!"
"Well, he did say that was our last warning," commented Ferb, as if he had anticipated it.
"Punch it!" Phineas shouted back. "We need to get out of here!"
Instantly, Ferb jabbed a button on the dash. Nothing happened.
"You're flooding it!"
"I'm not flooding it!"
As they fought with the controls, the enemy vehicle fired another missile. This time, Ferb wasn't ready, and the ensuing explosion rocked the time machine. It quickly spun out of control and crashed to the ground.
It had been many hours since Ferb had come to and found himself in a dim, damp cell. His wrists and ankles were shackled to the brick wall and floor so that he could barely move, and his body began to ache.
There had been no stimuli in all that time―no movement to catch the eye, no sound aside from his labored breathing, and furthermore, no sign of Phineas. Nothing to hear or see until at long last, a bolt was unlatched and a creaky metal door somewhere out of sight down the long hallway swung open.
Footsteps. Coming his way. Ferb looked up as his captors, several figures, appeared into view through the bars at the front of his cell.
"And there's the other one," a pitchy feminine voice squeaked. "So after disappearing for twenty years, both Phineas and Ferb have returned to the timeline at last. I have been expecting you." Its owner twittered in laughter.
Though her face had grown slightly wrinkled, her sunshine blonde hair shone as bright as ever, not a gray strand to be found. Ferb recognized the aged up version of his captor readily: Suzy Johnson.
He could have asked any of a thousand questions. He could have hurled any insult. But Ferb elected to simply watch, silent and stoic.
As he found usually happened, Ferb's conversation partner answered his most pressing question anyway. "I just had a chat with your brother. He bravely refused to tell me anything about what you are up to, and only asked about you." Suzy's face contorted into a wicked smile. "Even after we relieved him of these." She indicated to a guard at her side, who revealed a small canister and popped it open for Ferb to see. The can's insides contained several loose teeth and the bloody chips of human fingernails.
Suzy's grin faltered somewhat when Ferb gave no visible reaction whatsoever. "Huh, your pokerface is as good as ever, I see. No matter. I'll just have to find other ways to have my fun. Most people break at some point and tell me everything I want to know. Let's find out if you really do only say one line per day!"
He was being moved from his prison cell, but the guards had not told him where.
It had been a few days since Suzy's beating. His body was beginning to recover, allowing him to walk under his own power as the guards led him outside the prison for the first time. Ferb paused to bask in the sunlight for a brief moment, leaning into its warm embrace, before being prodded in the back to keep moving.
A bus was waiting, idling away and puffing up exhaust fumes. Ferb was instructed to board. Tall as he was, he had to slouch ever so slightly to walk down the aisle, scanning the faces of his fellow passengers as he went. Not finding the one face he was looking for, Ferb resigned himself to an empty seat toward the back.
Ferb rested the pickaxe over his shoulder as he trudged along with the rest of the prisoners back to camp. His clothes were covered in dirt and grime after another long day of forced labor. His stomach grumbled, a feeling he was becoming very used to, yet he knew the dinner meal would be as small as ever.
No one had ever heard him complain, though―it had been two months since he had spoken a word. Two months since he had last seen his brother.
The barbed wire fencing gradually expanded into view as the prisoners approached their dismal home. Ferb joined the line as his peers dropped off their tools outside the gates so they could be let in, having their persons checked one-by-one by the guards for contraband. Ferb subjected himself to the routine patdown and made his way for the mess hall.
There were some new faces. A fresh shipment of prisoners must have arrived while he was out. Hopes still high, Ferb glanced around the room―
And someone called his name.
"Ferb!"
"...!"
Phineas ran up and embraced his brother. "It's so good to see you! You look awful, though."
Phineas was looking pretty ragged himself. His face was gaunt, he had lost a noticeable amount of weight. Stubble patches peppered his nonexistent chin. But the light in his eyes Ferb knew so well had far from extinguished.
"Now that we're together again at last," Phineas declared, "we can find a way to break out of here! Ferb, I know what we're gonna do today! Well, maybe not today, I mean, it's already late, and I am feeling tired, but you know what I mean!"
The next few weeks passed in a montage-like flash. Phineas and Ferb began constructing a secret tunnel underneath their overcrowded lodge. Toiling at night, they kept their work a secret from the prison camp guards.
During the day, they were sometimes caught falling asleep on the job by the guards. They had to work shorter hours at night to not appear too suspiciously fatigued and avoid drawing the attention of their taskmasters, slowing their progress.
Sometimes, Phineas, moved with compassion for the suffering going on around him, would give his meal portion to the children living in the camp with them. He tried to keep that a secret, too, but Ferb noticed.
After many weeks, the exhausted brothers completed their project and prepared to make their escape the next night.
"Hurry, Ferb! We have to keep moving!"
Ferb grunted incoherently as Phineas pulled his brother's arm around his shoulder to drag his nearly limp body up through the brush of the mountain slope. Dogs bayed in the distance, indicating that they didn't have much time left.
There wasn't much further they could run, or anywhere left for them to go but away from the guards chasing after them. Phineas was so tired he felt like he couldn't walk another step, but he refused to give up and pushed on, not sure whether Ferb was conscious or not.
"Go on without me," Ferb weakly muttered, answering that question. "Leave me and save yourself."
"You know I'll never do that!" Phineas responded in a determined voice. He took another belabored step forward, then another. "We can still make it! We've got to!"
The barking was getting unnervingly close. Phineas gritted his teeth and kept moving forward, hoping beyond hope that some idea would come to him.
Instead, they reached a wall of bushes next to a large boulder, hedging their way. Phineas leaned against the boulder to rest. It was eerily shaped―no, ear-ily shaped, he mused, for it looked almost cartoonishly like an ear.
Then something caught his eye. Setting down Ferb, he moved some branches and fallen leaves around and stepped back in utter perplexity.
Somehow, a time machine was sitting right there in the middle of the woods.
"Well I'll be," Phineas whistled. "Say, this time machine looks kind of familiar, don't you think?"
Ferb was passed out and didn't respond.
There was a cobblestone propped unnaturally against the side of the machine. Curious, Phineas inspected it, and to his astonishment, found the key to the machine right behind it.
The dogs were closing in, their barking becoming louder and more frenetic. Phineas quickly opened the door hatch and inserted the key. Somehow, miraculously, the machine whirred to life.
"C'mon, Ferb!" Phineas rushed to drag his brother into the vehicle. "We're getting out of here!"
The dogs broke through the brush and rushed directly at them. Just behind, the guards came into view, sighting the escapees. Phineas shut the door to the time machine and plopped himself down at the control seat.
With a pop, the time machine vanished without a trace.
And so Phineas and Ferb made it back to their own time, escaping the bad future using the very same time machine PJ had left behind as instructed by the supercomputer. Suzy's ace-in-the-hole was her knowledge that Phineas and Ferb were trapped in the future. If PJ defeated the Conspirium, he would delete that future along with everything in it. By returning to a point just before PJ defeated the Conspirium and changed the course of history once again, Phineas and Ferb were not deleted from existence as Suzy had predicted. However, they experienced many hardships along the way, seeing first-hand the horrors of a timeline where the Conspirium had won.
Hey guys, zapdosmaster145 here! You'll have to wait a year for the next Story From Another Time. Like I said, one chapter will be released every 4th of July until every story has been told. And there are still a few left to tell! If you have any questions, suggestions, or comments, please leave them in a review! Meanwhile, I am still getting started on writing Lovetopia's final chapter, and by the time this is posted I hope to have another chapter reading and commentary for Under Absolute Despotism up on my youtube channel. Thanks for reading and happy Independence Day, my fellow Americans!
