Chapter 3

Making Connections

"Okay dudes, so let me make sure I have this all correct," Soos said, helping Ford fiddle around with the wires of the newest machine. "The creep who Dipper and Wendy found in her mom's suppressed memory is loose in the multiverse."

"Yes, Soos," Wendy patiently replied.

"And we're still sure that we shut down that cult of busybodies with the stuffy robes, the Society of the Blind Eye?"

"Yes, they're gone. Remember how I smashed the memory ray gun?" Mable said.

"And that Blind Eye dude is still wandering around like a hobo because we erased his memory after he dedicated his entire life and identity to the cult."

"Fiddleford still feels awful for accidentally creating a cult," Ford grunted. "Soos, please pay attention. Hold those wires in place while I do the soldering."

Soos flipped down his welder's mask and followed Ford's instruction. However, he continued, "So the dude we found out about because McGucket went insane, whose cult took Wendy's mom's memory, prompting your crazy, interdimensional, intergalactic manhunt, is out there in the multiverse looking for a way to unleash an eldritch god who is the embodiment of all endings?"

"Yes, Soos! That's correct," Dipper said, beginning to grow frustrated.

"And because the Tscheapwhetzar, who messed around with our timeline after Stan defeated Bill, which got you two lovebirds together…" He lifted his mask and winked. "Ouch! Oh! The phosphorus light does not feel good for my eyes ouch! But anyways, he went to an ancient council of the multiversal gods and petitioned for a way to defeat the creepy dude who is now calling himself William Cryptic. And so he's giving us help and allies because he won't interfere further and screw up the whole multiverse."

"Wow, it's like you memorized this whole notebook," Stan said dryly, slapping the Tscheapwhetzar's instructions against a nearby tool table.

"I try, Mr. Pines, I try," Soos said humbly. "So, now that we know all of that, we're supposed to use the machine designed and detailed exactly in these instructions, using the Collector's powers, to help us connect with the allies we'll need to battle Willaim Cryptic across all times and dimensions."

"YES!" Collector shouted. "Did we really need a rundown of everything?"

Soos shrugged. "I think it helps to learn through not only visually seeing stuff and reading it, but reciting all acquired knowledge in your own words so that it sticks better."

"Soos, you're almost certified genius," Ford said. "For a mole-child, man-thing."

"That last description especially," Stan added.

Collector noticed Soos about to speak again, so he hurriedly cut off the handyman. "Look, once you guys are done building the machine, which you should have just me do anyway, I will power it up and then we get going with contacting all the people listed in the notebook! And I think you will love them! King is such a great friend and so funny! And Luz is a real hero! All their friends are great, too.

"I'm not sure about these people… Anne Boonchuy, Sahsa Waybright, Marcy Wu, and a bunch of anthropomorphic frogs with items for names, but I'm sure that they're great, too! The Tscheapwhetzar showed me how important it was to bring everyone together across three separate timelines in order to make this all work out! There, now you have it Soos."

"You are so smart, Collector," Soos replied kindly and somewhat reverently. "I hope my children can be just like you when they get older. Just maybe minus the floating and magic. Though it's cool, I don't want to be cleaning Melody's lipstick off the ceiling!"

"Ugh, Soos being a responsible father… I don't know if I can handle the wholesomeness!" Stan shuddered. "Quick, someone tell a dirty joke!"

Dipper wanted to help but hung back in a corner with Wendy. Soos and Ford had everything well in hand, moving quickly to transform a tricky portal machine into the interdimensional, time-breaking communicator they would need to pull all the heroes together. According to Ford and Stan, the Tscheapwhetzar had contacted them privately on a number of occasions, encouraging them to work with McGucket to build all kinds of strange devices and conduct experiments of weirdness. One of these contraptions was a portal that was meant to send messages and materials to another version of Grunkle Ford.

He pondered what it could all mean as Wendy took his hand. She smiled down at him and asked, "Is the exposition beginning to bore you as much as me?"

"Just a little," he admitted with a small smile.

"Then how about we get some fresh air?"

"Sure thing."

Mabel noticed them leaving and quickly called out, "I'll come with you! Meldoy and I can bake some celebratory muffins for everyone! We can have them when Soos and Ford manage to change this hunk of junk!"

"Ah, I want to bake, too!" Collector complained.

"Why don't you join us?" Mabel invited.

The floating, magical kid shook his head. "Sorry, no can do. I have to make sure these knuckleheads get all the calibrations just right. Otherwise, even with my powers, everything could go KABOOM!" As he said this, he threw out his hands and conjured tons of fiery explosions that cast shadows of everyone dead and burnt to skeletons. Exactly the kind of thing Dipper didn't want to see at the moment. "It's kind of like the portal that Belos was trying to build to get back home, but even trickier. Because you guys aren't trying to get somewhere, but to connect different timelines and worlds without causing them to implode or erase each other.

"And using this time magic too, this is different. Archivists don't hold any power over time. They really, really wanted to subjugate the Time Giants, but they were too powerful in the past. And when they wiped each other out, we couldn't get to the lone survivor who started regulating all the timelines and prevented the bigger Archivists from even getting close! That Bill Cipher character must have been super powerful and chaotic to destroy the last Time Giant!"

A simple answer would have sufficed, but he just went way off on that tangent, Dipper thought.

But then it struck him as he watched the strange kid. Though the Collector was definitely not a human child, with all his cosmic markings and weird eyes, his mannerisms were so youthful. Apparently, he had been traveling across the cosmos, all by himself, looking for chances to make friends when the Tscheapwhetzar found him. He was starved for interaction and was so eager to be helpful, to please, and to have fun. Of course he wanted to talk and talk, and hopefully make a connection.

Dipper's expression softened as he watched Collector. He and the alien were alike in their own quirky ways. And if he, a once self-absorbed, too young, conspiracy theorist could mature and figure out how real relationships, this eager, wide-eyed cosmic kid could do the same.

Mabel joined him and Wendy in the elevator and they made their way back up into the Mystery Shack. As the door closed, Mabel sobered a bit, saying, "I understand Soos; this is a lot to take in! Connecting between three different timelines to stop one creepazoid who probably kidnapped your mother, Wendy? We've been through plenty of crazy stuff before. Madladl still doesn't hold a candle against Weirdmageddon, but still..."

"It feels different," Wendy said, squeezing Dipper's hand. "All of this just flew out of nowhere. I don't get it either."

The door opened up on the Mystery Shack proper. As they filed out, Dipper said, "Everything we've been through before has been us stumbling across something we probably shouldn't have. But this time it's coming for us. It's a new kind of unprepared. I think that's why we're feeling so shaken."

"That, and it's just so… big," Mabel said, stretching out her hands and wiggling her fingers. "But hey! The world is likely going to come to an end! Let's greet it with smiles on our faces and muffins in our hands!"

"The world is going to what now?" Melody gasped, entering the kitchen.

"Heeeeey Melody, girl!" Mabel said, laying it on thick. "Do I have a story to tell you! Oh! And you have lemon mix! I got the sprinkles!"

"Do you always carry baking sprinkles in your pocket?"

"Yup, right along with all my glitter!"

Dipper nudged Wendy and nodded up the stairs. The couple made their way out to Wendy's favorite hangout spot in the whole place. The wooden outcropping on the roof, creating the perfect deck for escaping and relaxing, was still outfitted with lawn chairs, a cooler packed with Pitt Cola, and umbrellas.

"Good thing Soos keeps this place up," Wendy remarked.

"He's trying to be responsible dad and business owner, but I think he still wishes we could go back to that first summer," Dipper said, handing Wendy a chilled can. "There's something comforting about it."

"You got that right."

He and Wendy cuddled together on the same lawn chair, reclining and looking up at the stars. Ever since learning that aliens were real and their corpses buried deep under Gravity Falls, Dipper had stopped asking if they were alone in the cosmos. He now gazed up and wondered when the rest of humanity would wake up to that fact. His Grunkles had told him the truth about Frogvasion back in 2019, but McGucket (when he was still president) and the U.S. government had done a superb job covering it all up. When would the façade come crashing down and Earth takes its place in a much larger, weirder universe?

The answer was that it was already here, with a cosmic kid hanging out in the basement and helping to power a device that would hurl the Pines and their friends into a complicated war for the salvation of the entire multiverse. The stars were no longer filled with wonder or questions. They were now a collapsing trap, bearing down on them.

Everything feels off because in effect, we don't have a choice. We chose to fight Bill and save the world. We chose to return here to Gravity Falls and stop Madladl. But this time, the choices have already been made for us, and by someone who could do something, anything about it!

Wendy nuzzled his neck and commented, "You're being abnormally quiet."

"Eh?"

"I thought you would be squealing with delight at a new adventure and a chance for us to explore the multiverse, be the heroes, get revenge for what happened to my mom, stuff like that."

"I squealed once when Grunkle Ford told me his backstory." He blushed, remembering that it was actually twice. How embarrassing!

Wendy, ever the tactful woman, didn't tease him when she noticed the heat creeping up his neck and cheeks. She held him tighter and said, "Thank you."

"For what?"

"Coming out here. Giving me a break. Always being you." She breathed him in deeply. "That's what I love about, Dipper. You're always there for me, doing your best."

Dipper wasn't sure how to respond. He wanted to ask her how she was holding up under the very recent, very raw revelation that her mother was dead. And then there was the promise that they could still save Mrs. Corduroy for another Wendy. That had to be encouraging, but still sad. All that hope they had felt upon learning what might have happened to her, only for the conclusion of their search to be very different.

Sandwich that between the threat of a multiversal conflict and the Tscheapwhetzar's mandates, Dipper's head was left spinning.

"You're strong, Wendy," he said, squeezing her back. "You've always been the coolest person I know, and I'm just trying to keep up."

"Hey, don't sell yourself short. Or I might start rethinking your proposal."

Dipper's heart stopped. Would she do that?

Wendy kissed him on the cheek. "Soos and Ford will have that machine working soon. Let's take this chance to just clear our heads and do something else. Mabel is making muffins. What should we do?"

They shared a look, fear and desperation swirling behind their eyes. Dipper returned the kiss as Wendy shifted position. Hopefully they wouldn't wake up Soos' kids.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Ford felt the sweet sensation of a job well done. The communication device was ready. Soos finished attaching a receptacle for Time Baby's magic to be fed into the machine. It was remarkable that Time Baby had finally figured out sometime in the future how to break his doomed loop. It was more than mathematically possible, but it did require some creativity and a lot of power and foresight.

There were theories that time loops didn't just exist as immutable events where all decisions and consequences were 100% destined to play out as they had the millionth time around as they did the first. A perfect, infinite loop. Some people believed that by merely creating a loop, where time insisted to flow linearly, that it created a butterfly effect that would eventually build up in a unique way to disrupt the loop.

Ford found the theory intriguing, but he really didn't want to dedicate himself to an eternity of playing out the same day or year just to test it out. However, this magic in a jar, as silly as it sounded, could be the key to figuring out more about time than he had ever imagined possible.

Just think of everything he could accomplish!

"Oooooo! I know that look in your eyes," Collector said, suddenly appearing next to Ford's eyeball. "That's the same creepy gleam Belos got when he thought that his plans were coming together! He was going to return to Earth as a hero after killing all the witches on the Boiling Isles!"

The Boiling Isles. The realm that boasted being the origin of all weirdness that spilled in Earth. It was a common theory in some circles, but really it was one of many wellsprings from which oddities and weirdness flowed into Earth. All thanks to the weirdness nexus he called home, Gravity Falls.

Still, it is very curious to hear anyone mention the Boiling Isles! I've always wanted to swing by there if I could. But I have to deal with this strange, alien kid in the meantime. Ford cleared his throat and finally replied to Collector, "I don't know who this Belos is, but I am excited to see this machine work. When I traveled the multiverse, I came across a possibility of meeting myself, but under the circumstances the results would have been catastrophic.

"With a device like this, not only can we help save the multiverse, but I can finally explore something that has bugged me a lot since reuniting with Stanley."

He instantly regretted revealing so much about himself to a stranger. Sure, they were supposed to be allies, but Ford was so used to playing things close to the chest. And when dealing with cosmic monstrosities, secrets could come in handy. Unfortunately, Collector was quickly picking up on everything.

"Ah! Your twin over there! That handsome devil!" Collector pointed over to Stanley, who was picking his nose and scratching his butt crack at the same time. "You two may look it, but you're definitely not two peas in the same pod!"

"That's both right and wrong," Ford grunted. "We're both who we are because of our upbringing… But Stanley is the real hero if you were ever looking for one."

"I'll add him to my list of contacts and my heroes bingo card!"

"You… You have one of those?"

"Sure do!" Collector snapped his fingers and summoned all kinds of books, notes, and cards into the dusty air around them. They floated on light blue magic, revealing all kinds of names and details. "I've been traveling across the multiverse myself, trying to learn more about how to be a good friend. I've been studying real hard so I can be more helpful to King when I return to the Boiling Isles! And hopefully I can undo some of the damages caused by the other Archivists."

The Archivists…

They were going to be a real problem. According to the Tscheapwehtzar's battle strategy, they needed to be dealt with. Thanks to the events surrounding Madladl, it sent shockwaves across this timeline's multiverse, signaling to many other cosmic forces that Earth was not to be messed with. Three ancient beings and civilizations had met their defeat on the distant ball of dirt; other powers would double and triple think about potentially attacking Earth. And the Archivists were meticulous; they had learned from their near disaster fighting the Boiling Isles. It was another aspect of that other world that intrigued Ford.

But in all other timelines, the Archivists came to Earth some years after Frogvasion to "preserve" humanity and prevent Earth from advancing further. There was also Time Baby to collect. That possible war would set into motion a chain of events that would lead to eventual anarchy and the rise of Time Baby, wiping out nearly everything that Earth had once been and ushering in a future cyberpunk age.

Beyond that, the consequences of Bill's triumph over Time Baby were unknown.

We're dealing with a lot of unknowns, Ford admitted to himself. But we're supposed to make sure that the Archivists do not cause a near collapse of Earth when they arrive! I guess this little guy is going to be really important in that endeavor. We aren't supposed to let William Cryptic (such a stupid name…) use the attack to mask his actions.

The Collector was absentmindedly listing off the amazing people he'd met and the adventures he had. Soos was mesmerized and Ford had to remind him to get back to work. Collector dismissed his collection of notes and joined them in finishing up the construction.

Once the job was complete, they called up for everyone to meet back in the basement. Mabel and Melody arrived with delicious, brightly decorated muffins. Stanely swiped three before Ford even had a chance to eat one. Dipper and Wendy returned a bit later, appearing flushed.

Ah, to be young again. Though Ford begrudgingly didn't have real experience in that. Maybe one day he'd get the chance to mee the Oracle again.

Soos pulled out his sound action keyboard and played out a celebration. "Alright dudes, dudettes, and Melody! We've finished the machine! Now, let's start talking with some other timelines!"

"Way to rush things, Soos," Stanely grumbled. He helped Ford place the time magic into the machine.

Collector zipped over and said, "Without any further ado!"

He pushed a button.

The machine roared to life, and for the first time in years, a truly consequential portal opened up beneath Gravity Falls.