the steady continental seventy — ix
Dipper isn't surprised by how much easier it is to slip through the store unnoticed with Wendy in the lead. Just as during Weirdmageddon, there's a benefit to having a flippin' Corduroy in the party. The electronics section is its own room, separated from the rest of the store by two small hallways. Its lack of windows and curved entrance corridors must be to prevent glare on the many screens inside and keep the noise from the speaker systems contained. There are some seriously strange sounds emanating from within; thumps and metallic scratching, like something sliding across the floor.
The sight that greets them is even stranger.
Ford and Pacifica are on a raised dais which must have once housed a display. Arrayed on the lower floor around them are nearly thirty Robotomizers clawing at a barricade made of shelves and tables. The thumping sounds are coming from the Robotomizers, who are making poor progress in dismantling the barricade due to much smaller obstacles in the form of ball bearings and screws scattered across the entirety of the polished wooden floor. The attack androids, never all that graceful with even the surest of footing, are constantly crashing to the floor as they lose their balance. A spotlight falls on the dais, illuminating Ford as he bends over a table full of dismantled cameras and night vision goggles. Pacifica stands at the edge of the platform, throwing the heavy metal shells of the scavenged equipment at any Robotomizer who looks somewhat stable. The scene has the quality of a farce, an overly abstract theater production in which the audience constantly performs pratfalls.
Ford looks up just as they enter. "Excellent timing!" he calls out as he winds copper wire into a thick coil. "Stay back, these things mean business!"
Dipper's group hesitates at the edge of the room, unsure of how to proceed.
Judging the Robotomizers to be sufficiently focused on Ford and Pacifica, Dipper says, "Don't worry, guys! We'll figure something out!"
"THE HUMANS ARE REUNITED—BUT FOR HOW LONG?" the loudspeaker wonders.
"It's alright, Dipper. This should work!" Ford finishes taping the wire and attaches it to a mound of circuit boards and batteries. "You might feel a brief shock or a bit of heat, but it's quite harmless."
Dipper can't see exactly what Ford is up to. "Okay. Should I be doing something, or…?"
Without warning, a bright light flares up for the briefest second on the dais and there's a sharp crack, like a huge electric spark. Dipper feels a static sensation; his hair stands up on his arms and prickles at the back of his neck. Simultaneously, every Robotomizer falls to the ground with a collective crash and the room is plunged into complete darkness.
Fords voice drifts out of the black silence. "That did the trick."
"Why do I feel slightly cooked?" Wendy says.
"Dude, did we just get microwaved?" Soos asks.
"Sort of," Dipper says. "Nice EMP, Great-Uncle Ford!"
"Dipper!" Pacifica's voice rings out from somewhere ahead. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. I was looking for you," Dipper tells her with relief.
"Hey, Dips-a-lot—touch my finger," Mabel says, her tone of voice making it obvious that she's grinning.
Dipper is more concerned with Pacifica and Ford. "Not now, Ma— gah!"
Another, smaller spark snaps to life and briefly illuminates the tip of Mabel's finger as she blindly brushes it across Dipper's neck, sending the extreme amount of static clinging to her sweater arcing between them with a stinging shock. Dipper claps a hand over his neck and rubs at it.
"Dang, that was a good one!" Wendy laughs.
Light returns in the form of two camping lanterns held by Ford, each bearing the marks of extensive tinkering. Dipper picks his way through the fallen Robotomizers; when he reaches the dais, Ford hands him one of the lanterns and begins passing out modified flashlights.
"First, the good news," Ford tells the group. "We're still in our own dimension. I recognize the technology and we were simply translocated. The device will be bidirectional, and I already know how to use it."
"Cool beans," Wendy says. "Lay the bad news on me."
"I haven't been able to track down the translocator array, and we're missing Stanley."
"The announcer-dude didn't say anything about him," Soos says.
This increases Dipper's level of concern for his grunkle; the list of weird descriptive names had only been read off one time, and Dipper had missed that Stan hadn't been among them.
"Has anyone seen him?" Dipper asks everyone. Every reply he receives is negative.
"I can go look for him," Soos volunteers.
"No, we can't afford to split up now," Ford says. "We've broken the game and I doubt our captors are going to take it lying down. My guess is they'll decide we're more trouble than we're worth. The best way for us to help Stan is to find the translocator and move the store back to Earth."
From the other sections of the store, Dipper can hear the announcer declaring the show is experiencing technical difficulties. Ford is right; the game may be a free for all without much in the way of rules, but contestants who permanently sabotage entire sections of the store aren't going to be worth putting up with. The second that Ford burned out who knows how much advanced recording equipment was the second the show runners started losing money.
Well, viewers or ratings or whatever, which will eventually translate into money. Dipper supposes any aliens sufficiently advanced enough to carelessly sacrifice robots as sophisticated as Robotomizers probably won't be all that worried about losing a camera or two. It's the rules being broken that are the real problem. The contestants are fighting the game itself instead of each other.
"Where to, Grunkle Ford?" Mabel asks, hefting her crossbow.
"We have to keep moving." Ford gathers up his equipment, hoisting the EMP generator in an improvised harness made from camera bag straps. "I can use the EMP to knock out the surveillance system, but only in a limited area. We must track down the translocator array."
"What does it look like?" Wendy says.
"The array requires extender fins to encompass the location, but they'll be hidden on the outside of the building, so we can't trace them. The controls are bound to be near the generator," Ford explains. "It's likely a hydrogen-based reactor. One of the byproducts is water, which they may be siphoning back into a cooling system: If we can locate running water, it could lead us to the reactor."
Dipper and Pacifica look at each other. "The stream!" they exclaim.
The aliens running the game must still be in a state of confusion, because the group encounters little resistance on the way to the atrium, dodging only a few scattered Robotomizers. Dipper knows that's going to change as soon as the show runners figure out what happened in the electronics department, and it's that thought which keeps him moving at full speed. He doesn't know how many Robotomizers there are, but if they all come at once there's a good chance Ford won't be able to knock them out before the group gets overwhelmed during a recharge.
They reach the central area and Ford pauses near the stream. He dips one finger in it and sticks it in his mouth. "Hmm, rather metallic for a water feature. I think we may on to something!"
The stream winds along the path of the stairs and they follow it back to its source. Against the far wall on the second floor is a pond complete with fake boulders and lily pads. Ford wades into it and begins searching the concrete rocks for an entryway.
"Check for anything suspicious," he says. "A latch, or a hidden seam."
It's Pacifica who finds something first. "I think this rock is a door," she says.
Ford moves over to where she is and confirms her finding. "It's locked. But is it locked electronically…?"
He activates his device and there's another spark and the feeling of static. Something inside the wall deactivates with a clang and Ford forces the rock to swing aside, revealing it's really half of a fake rock over a metal door. The revealed corridor is dark and lined with pipes; it smells like oil and heated metal. They file in, following Ford into the guts of the building.
Ford hurries forward into a larger room. It's reminiscent of the warehouse in Piedmont, all concrete floors and catwalks, but the air is hot and steamy like a boiler room. At the far end is the orb of the generator in a nest of pipes, and even more promising is the room to the side protected by tempered glass, full of strange consoles and monitors. Dipper realizes he's seeing at least part of what whoever made the game can see; a rack of screens shows key points in the store, a couple of which display nothing but static. A chill runs through him when he notices the bands of Robotomizers; they're moving more quickly, and hunting in packs.
"Uh-oh," Mabel says, noticing the same thing. "They're getting frisky out there!"
"Then it's best we were on our way," Ford says as his fingers fly over an input device. "My Betelgeusian machine language is a little rusty, but I do believe… I've got it!"
The transition between locations had been seamless from Dipper's perspective before, but he'd been inside a tent and nowhere near the generator. Within the control room the lights flicker, and the generator's noise increases in volume to a roaring crescendo; reaching a fever pitch, it slowly dies back down to its usual level.
"That did it," Ford says. "Now to ensure they can't move us back."
Dipper doesn't know enough about the equipment to understand what Ford does to sabotage it. When they exit the hidden room, the windows reveal the cloudy grey sky of Earth. Beads of water slide down the glass; it's still raining, as if they never left.
"If we move quick enough, we may be able to find Stanley and slip out before— ah." Ford comes to a halt.
Streaming into the atrium from every hallway is an army of Robotomizers, their collective footsteps loud enough to echo through the room. They aren't quite marching in formation, but their movements are synchronized to the point it adds an extra layer of intimidation.
The loudspeaker system crackles overhead. "RETURN THE ARENA TO US IMMEDIATELY AND YOU WILL BE SPARED FROM LIQUIDATION."
"Oh, yeah, like you won't kill us anyway," Wendy scoffs.
"Our timetable is less forgiving than I'd hoped. Run!" Ford barks, firing his EMP to give them a little space. The device stuns the forerunners of the Robotomizers, dropping them like puppets with their strings cut.
As one, Dipper and the others sprint down the stairs and veer into the only clear hallway, the one which leads to the entrance. Dipper looks over his shoulder, watching with wide eyes as the robot horde closes in behind them, moving slowly but inevitably. Even more worrying are the previously unseen robots running along the ceiling; they aren't humanoid but look like little four-legged cranes with hands instead of hooks. These must be what grabbed people and took them away earlier, and they are much, much faster than the regular robots. Turning back around, Dipper sees that Pacifica is having a hard time keeping up due to her shorter legs; he takes her hand and keeps pace with her. The light of the entryway's windows grows clearer and then they burst from the hall into the open space—
—and are confronted by an impassable wall of Robotomizers. Dipper doesn't know how many there are, but even Ford's EMP won't be capable of disabling all of them. They're packed so thick that the front of the mob will absorb the pulse, leaving at least some of the back operable.
The humans come to an ungainly halt, unsure of what to do and getting closer to being surrounded with every passing second.
"We'll have to punch through one of the hallways," Ford shouts. "We can find a window or another door at ground level!"
Before anyone can move, the sound of an electric motor fills the entryway. Emerging from the right hall at high speed is a bright green UTV, complete with enormous off-road tires and suspension system; it tears through the confines of the passageway, shedding coats and snow pants as it wrecks clothing displays. It plows into the collected robots like a runaway freight train. The noise is tremendous—broken limbs and torsos careen across the room in a cloud of morbidly twitching debris. The sheer number and weight of the Robotomizers slows the UTV until it crashes against the curved wall on the opposite side of the main entrance, pinning several androids between the logs and its hood.
The driver door opens and drops off its hinges. Grunkle Stan staggers out with a climbing pick in each hand, swinging wildly at nearby Robotomizers. He knocks two of them away and then gets one down on the ground and smashes his picks into its head, slamming metal against metal, sending chunks of rubbery skin wheeling away until something in the robot's cranium gives with a flurry of sparks.
Breathing hard, he stands up. "There you are! What in the holy heck are these things?!"
"Hang on, Stanley!" Ford yells back. He activates his EMP and the Robotomizers advancing on Stan go limp. The apparatus makes a fizzling sound that it hadn't before, and Ford seems concerned. "That wasn't at full power," he reports. "I don't know if these batteries have another charge in them. Hurry!"
Dipper glances backwards again; the EMP knocked out the front lines of the approaching throng and the faster ones on the ceiling have detached and broken against the floor. Plenty more still push forward over the wreckage of their fallen comrades.
A moment later, he runs into another serious problem: The weakened EMP was only partially effective, and he barely avoids the grasping hand of a Robotomizer writhing on the floor. He jumps over the prone death machine and rocks back on his heels to avoid another clawed swipe from a different foe.
Soos bounces on one foot past a half-immobilized Robotomizer, looking for all the world like he's playing a game of hopscotch with some very serious stakes. "Watch your feet, dudes!"
Ford pulls out his energy weapon and begins blasting open the skulls of the automatons, making a path to Stan. With a little agility and a lot of luck, the whole group moves across the minefield of grasping hands in stops and starts, ever aware of the mass of androids closing in. Stan does what he can from his position at the door, kicking a robot or two out of the way.
Dipper's heart lifts when he sees the parking lot through the sliding doors of the entrance. Just a few more feet and they'll be out in the open where they can easily outpace the Robotomizers and make it to the mobile safety of the RV.
That's when he hears a scream just to his right.
It's Pacifica. She's nearly made it to the clear space around the door, her feet only inches from it. One of the Robotomizers on the floor has reached upwards and snagged a handful of her hair near her neck, forcing her to kneel with her head at an awkward angle. Its other arm is deactivated, so it can't do anything else, but it's still keeping her in place. She holds her hair in both hands, tears in her eyes as she tries in vain to tug free.
"Ahhh! What is with everything pulling my hair?!" she shrieks.
Dipper leaps over the last Robotomizer in his way and rushes to her side. "I've got you, Pacifica!" he says.
But the robot's grip is too strong for him to break, even when Soos and Wendy assist. Mabel fires her crossbow point blank into the head of the Robotomizer; this deactivates it, but its hold does not release. Desperately, Dipper looks to Great-Uncle Ford and his gun, but Ford is fully occupied trying to keep the arriving horde of Robotomizers at bay, firing as quickly as the heat dissipation on his weapon will allow.
"Dipper, you must hurry!" Ford shouts as he blasts a Robotomizer's skull clean in two. "I've only got a few more shots before I overheat!"
"We're in it deep, kid!" Stan bellows as he smashes another robot to the ground with a blow of his brass knuckles, his climbing picks lying on the floor with their tips bent and useless.
"Ow-ow-ow," Pacifica groans, her eyes filled with pain and fear.
Dipper frantically makes another attempt to free her—it's useless. The Robotomizer's hand is bare of skin and Pacifica's hair has become locked in its fine joints, hopelessly tangled.
Wendy meets Dipper's eyes and pulls a buck knife out of her jeans.
Pacifica sees it. "Just let me die."
"Pacifica!" Dipper exclaims.
Pacifica squeezes her eyes shut. "No no no no no— oh my god do it."
With a few quick motions, Wendy saws through Pacifica's platinum locks, leaving the ragged ends brushing against her shoulders. They pull her to her feet and run. Soos kicks through the glass of the non-responsive automatic door and then they are in the parking lot, sprinting full tilt across the barren asphalt plain.
It isn't until they reach the RV that they pause for breath. Dipper looks to the store and sees that the Robotomizers haven't pursued past the exit. There's a rumbling that vibrates the ground beneath his feet, and smoke is rising over the atrium.
Ford is observing the smoke with curiosity. "I wasn't expecting smoke," he says. "Perhaps when I set the generator to overload—"
With an incredible cacophony, the store begins to fold in on itself, drawn into its own center. Its logs explode into flurries of sawdust and splinters that begin to orbit what must be a singularity forming where the translocator was. With the deafening groans of stressed metal and the crash of breaking glass, the building implodes, disappearing into a glowing purple nexus that pulses with an uncanny light. When every scrap of the structure has been sucked into the nether, the singularity pulses, expands, and explodes like an airburst munition, sending out a shockwave that floors everyone and rocks the RV back on two wheels.
When Dipper rises shakily to his feet, the sight that greets him is an enormous empty pit in the ground, the entire outdoor store scoured from existence down to its foundations.
Ford retrieves his glasses from a pothole and sits up. "I may have miscalculated."
Stan coughs and rolls onto his back, glaring accusingly upwards. "Would one of you blockheads like to explain how you turned a store into a bomb while I was takin' a nap?"
"Right after you explain how you slept through an alien kidnapping," Ford retorts.
"Hey, those camping beds are deceptively comfortable!"
Wendy sighs as she watches ash settle where the store used to be. "Man… They had the best hatchets." She pulls a hatchet out of the back of her jeans, price tag still attached. "Good thing I snagged one!"
"So, should we leave money for this stuff in the pit, or…?" Mabel says, cradling her new crossbow.
Wendy shrugs. "No store, no charge."
Ford pulls a small hammock box out of his trench coat, hefting it with a smile. "I think the circumstances allow a little six-finger discount."
Stan sits up and smugly pats one of his pockets. "All I'm sayin' is the cash registers in there were real."
"Dude, I should have grabbed something," Soos says regretfully. "Oh well. At least I got this rad souvenir!" He holds up a severed Robotomizer hand, its skin dangling off the wrist like deli meat and its fingers still twitching.
"That is so messed up!" Mabel giggles. "Pacifica, check it out—it's Headsy's brother! Pacifica?"
Dipper doesn't see Pacifica anywhere. Concerned, he walks around the RV and finds her hiding on the other side. She's got both hands in her hair, combing through it and feeling the uneven ends.
"Don't look at me," she snaps.
"It's not that bad," he insists.
"Sure, I bet I look so hot after my knife haircut!"
"We can fix it when we get to the city," Dipper assures her. "They'll have expensive hair places in Portland, they have to. It's Portland."
"They can't replace three feet of hair, Dipper!" She wipes at her eyes. "No matter where I have to go and no matter how much crud I have to walk through and no matter how much makeup I have to stop wearing at least I always have amazing hair and now I look like I cut my hair with a weed whacker."
Dipper has his own preoccupation with her stunning hair, but he honestly thinks there's still plenty of it left, even if it does sort of look like it was cut with a weed whacker. He just has a hard time imagining her hair appearing any way but cute, no matter how she wears it.
He doesn't know what to say. She's clearly hurt by the loss of her carefully cultivated hairstyle and that's something he can't fix. He decides to try giving her a hug—which seems like the kind of thing a supportive boyfriend would do—and is relieved when she accepts it and leans into him.
"I hope those stupid robots are crunched to bits," she says into his shoulder.
"I'm pretty sure they're crunched out of existence," Dipper says.
"They deserve it."
"Pacifica?" Mabel steps around the front of the RV with Wendy behind her. "Are you okay?"
"I'm great, Mabel, I just look like I live in a dumpster," Pacifica sneers.
"It's really not that bad," Wendy says.
"That's what I said," Dipper agrees.
Pacifica isn't buying it. "Oh, it's no big deal? Mabel, tell me you'd chop your hair off like this."
Mabel gamely replies, "I'd chop my hair off like that!"
"Liar!"
Wendy pulls the knife out again. "C'mon, man. If it'll make you feel better, I'll iron chef my hair right now."
"Ooh! Give me a mohawk!" Mabel says excitedly.
"Aren't you meeting that new guy in Portland? Don't show up looking like mirror-world Bodacious T."
"What if I had short cutie hair like Pacifica?" Mabel pinches her hair in half and holds it under her ears, kicking up one heel in a glamor pose.
"So we doing this?" Wendy asks Pacifica.
"God, just stop," Pacifica says, but she seems to be placated. "It's not going to make me feel better if we all look like bag ladies."
"Hey, I got you," Mabel says, stepping closer. "Climb aboard the braid train!"
Within a couple minutes, Mabel has managed to twist Pacifica's remaining hair into a passable braid that is slightly lumpy but neatly hides the shorn ends.
Pacifica views Mabel's handiwork in a pocket mirror and sighs through her nose. "…I guess farm girl is an upgrade from crazy person."
"Now your hair looks like a beautiful blonde climbing rope," Mabel says with satisfaction.
"For a really short wall," Wendy snickers.
Pacifica ignores her with stately dignity. "Thank you, Mabel. This will do until we get to Portland."
"We should take a girls' trip to a fancy city salon where they have frosted glass and mirrors on everything," Mabel suggests.
"Sounds boring as heck," Wendy says. "But right now, boring sounds pretty good."
"Seriously," Pacifica mutters, heading for the RV's door. "It's like we never left the valley."
Everyone files back up the dirt-caked steps into the RV. They leave the empty foundations of the store smoking under the low clouds of the afternoon; they drive for no more than half an hour before the rain picks up again and drowns out conversation. Most of the passengers fall into a light doze, Wendy with her head against the table window and Mabel with her head against Wendy. Soos passes out in the passenger seat and Dipper and Pacifica sit in the back, rocking with the gentle bumps on the highway and listening to the water sheet against the thin metal of the vehicle. It's a good thing Stan had a decent nap, because he's probably the only one fit to drive, assuming that Ford is in the trailer trying out his purloined hammock (as his radio silence suggests).
Dipper flirts with sleep, his eyelids drooping with increasing weight. His slow slide into welcome oblivion is halted when he hears Pacifica sigh quietly next to him, a wistful sound. He forces his eyes opens and sees that she is feeling her braid, measuring what she can't see; he can't help but notice that her eyes are sad and distant.
"Pacifica, I promise, it really isn't that bad," he tells her.
She grimaces, dropping her hands to fist at the bottom of her tank top, scrunching the fabric between her fingers. "Maybe."
He is completely honest when he says, "You still look amazing."
"You have to say that," she mutters. "I know I don't look amazing; I spent hours running from gross robots and tripping over things."
"You look amazing to me," Dipper says stubbornly.
She reaches up to play with the end of her braid again. "I thought about it anyway."
"What?"
"Cutting my hair." She looks out the window, her face drawn. "I thought maybe if I was going to be different, I should look different. Mom always wanted me to have long hair; she said young girls should have long and lovely hair. She used to make me brush it."
Dipper isn't sure what to say—for several reasons. "Uh… Is our deal finished, because we said—"
She cuts him off. "I know. I shouldn't care. Why do I care so much? I shouldn't."
"It's okay to care about stuff," Dipper says, which is such a trite and awkward way to express what he really feels, and he winces at his own words.
Pacifica sniffs and rubs at her eyes. When she raises her face, the sadness has been buried. "Whatever. I'll stop. All I want to say is, if she could see it right now… the look on her face would be worth it."
Dipper is beginning to regret their deal. It had seemed like a good idea to forget about these pressures on their adventurous road trip but holding everything in never worked out so great for her before. "Maybe we should forget—"
"No. I'm done, and the deal is still on."
Dipper mulls that over for a second. "Well, if I end up getting my hair chopped off, then I get to break the deal for a minute too."
"Fine, you baby," she says, and the smile that he puts on her perfect features is an absolute victory.