Chapter one: Ford-discovery

Stanford Pines woke up in his study room from a dreamless – Bill less – sleep. Last night was one of the rare times that he decided to sleep and didn't just fall asleep while working, and his first comfortable sleep in over thirty years as well, even though he had slept on a couch, seated. He could just be thankful that Bill was out of their lives now, and everyone in the shack was safe from him.

Stanford had had a busy day. He had safeguarded the shack and Stanley's RV by the unicorn hair, mercury and moonstone - Stanley and the kids were going on a road trip -, told the kids about Bill's plans, tried to Bill-proof Dipper's mind but somehow got possessed, and finally, he had done some calculations about the rift before sleeping.

He had come to the conclusion that the rift was constantly pressing its container with a force, but that was not all. The glass containing the rift was not strong enough to be under a constant pressure for so long, and it would cause the rift to literally break itself in a few weeks. Stanford was seriously afraid of this. He needed to do something for it, but he didn't know what. Also, he couldn't leave the shack now. He had to stay and take care of the shack while the rest of the family was gone. He thought he would find a way after Stanley's road trip was over.

This left nothing for him to do downstairs. So he stood up and walked up to the table where the journals and the rift were placed. He picked them up, placed them in his coat pockets – thanks to the many pockets he had – and stepped into the elevator to go upstairs.

As he used his watch to open up the door to the shack, he faced an empty, silent gift shop, just as he expected. But this silence carried memories with it. Memories of when he first moved to Gravity Falls. Memories of when he caught a few of those eye bats in a jar and came back home in ecstasy. Memories of the times he had found fossils of unusual creatures. Stanford remembered all of them at once, but he realized he was not in that house anymore. He was in the Mystery Shack, a place for so-called "paranormal" attractions. The only thing that was left of his house was the lab and the study room. The rest was not his. It was Stanley's. He felt mad at Stanley for turning his house into a tourist trap when he was gone.

But this thought made something else hit his mind. What else had Stanley changed in his house? Stanford had barely seen the gift shop and the TV room and a room that used to be his since he had come back. But his house was bigger, wasn't it? Stanford thought deeply, and decided to look around the rest of his house to see what changes he could spot.

Not only Stanford found out that his house had totally changed, he also realized that technology had become weirder than the first time he dreamed of Bill.

He had thought about this since the government agent had given him a small piece of plastic and said it contained everything about Stan's case. Stanford thought he would have to take a few floppy disks from them, but it seemed like they had concentrated their data in that drive, or something of the sort.

He found a drive almost like the one the agent had given him in the house. But he never expected what he read on the drive after he looked at it closely. '16 Gigabytes' it read.

He stared at the drive in surprise after reading the text on it. The highest capacity of a floppy disk in his day was eight hundred kilobytes, which meant less than a megabyte. And now there were sixteen gigabyte drives, even smaller than his sixth finger. Now he could see how science had expanded through these three decades that he was gone.

He thought about opening it and seeing what's inside it, how it works and how it can contain that much data. He also wanted to know why one would need sixteen gigabytes of data in a drive. But he decided against it after finding no way to open it up, so he moved on and left the drive right there.

A few minutes later he found a strange, black device which could fit in the palm of his hand, but he had no idea what it was. He looked at the sides of the device to find out about the use of the device, and found a few buttons on the left side and the top. He tried pressing the buttons until the button on top worked and the device glowed bright. This was so unexpected to Stanford he dropped the device on the ground. When he picked it back up, he realized it was just the screen of the device that he didn't notice before, for it was the same color as the rest of the phone.

The screen seemed fascinatingly vivid and colorful to Stanford. He didn't know there were screens that could show the colors this close to their real look. In fact, he was even more surprised that the phone was displaying an actual picture so vividly, it seemed real to him.

The picture was an image of Dipper and Stan's redheaded employee. On the top of the screen was something that seemed to be a digital clock, and in the bottom, he saw a rectangle with a text next to it: "slide to unlock".

Slide what? Unlock what? Stanford thought confusedly, and started to repeat these questions in his head over and over again. He apparently didn't know anything about touch screens. But though he didn't know what it was he was facing, he knew he will find a way into it, and so he began searching for something to "slide".

After about ten minutes of looking in the sides and the back of the device he didn't know the name to, Stanford thought he was not going to find out how to "slide" what the device asked him to slide. He didn't even know what to slide. He looked at the screen, thinking he was so done with all this.

But something caught his attention.

The button below the photo seemed so much like a three-dimensional shape, not just a rectangle. It seemed almost real …

Stanford found this pretty weird and stared at the button in wonder. After some thought, he decided to touch the button to see if it is real, but as he did so, it moved.

Stanford's jaw was left open in surprise. All that was on his mind at the moment was just one single word; "How?"

He finally took his own control and decided to touch the button again and see if it moves again or not. And it did.

"Fascinating! This thing works on the touch of my fingers! How could they have possibly invented something like this?" he exclaimed, not knowing these were the first words he'd spoken today.

He finally took the button to the right side of the screen, only to see a number keyboard appear in front of him, saying "enter PIN code." And four squares below it.

Great. Another expression I've got to find the meaning of. Stanford thought, and started his attempt to "decipher" the code by the Atbash cipher, and go on to the other ones if he didn't find the answer.

After finding no answer by any trick, he concluded that it has to be a password of some kind. So he tried a few codes.

But none worked.

After his fifth attempt, a note popped up that said something along the lines of "you've been wrong for five times", "if this happens again, your phone will crash, for security reasons", and …

But he didn't care, the most it could take was six thousand tries, so why worry?

He didn't actually read the note.

He tried a few more times and got a few more notes until the phone actually crashed. The screen was totally black now, and he couldn't turn it on with any button. So he left the phone right where it used to be and left the room, saying "Not my fault this happened."

He actually thought he was so done with his search in his house, not knowing his biggest discovery awaited him somewhere upstairs…

Stanford opened a door, and heard the very same noise for the thousandth time in the day. He had to fix this issue with the doors, but he didn't know if he could, because all the doors made this noise, and there were many doors in the shack. He wondered how Stanley lived in this house? Had it been him, he would have gone mad.

The old scientist had been looking for new things and changes for almost three hours, and had realized that a lot of rooms had changed functions, and some had finally found a reason to be used. He had never used the attic when he lived here, and the room Stanley used as his bedroom used to be Fiddleford's when he worked with him – Stanford had a habit of sleeping on a couch because of the many all-nighters he pulled.

Deepened in thought, Stanford stepped in the TV room and kept walking aimlessly, remembering the differences he had noticed in the past few hours. It seemed impossible to get used to this house after these many changes. He kept walking until he found himself in front of the stairway.

He had taken a brief look at the rooms upstairs, but he had analyzed everywhere in the first floor perfectly, and didn't seem to have anything else to do. So he decided to go back upstairs, and see what else he would find there.

After he was done with the stairs, he noticed how painful his back was. He was getting old. He had never been like this in the other dimension, maybe because there were ways of healing himself at the nightmare realm. He held his back with one hand, groaning in pain. He had to take a break. But just as he let this thought in his mind, he saw a door entitled "Office".

An office for such a cheap tourist trap seemed weird to Stanford. He knew Stanley made money out of scamming people by telling them fake legends about fake creatures, but this had nothing new for people but rumors. Sure they originated from somewhere, but people would never find out. Then again, why would such a job need an office?

This thought made him more curious. He knew Stanley must be hiding something in the "Office". Stanford opened the door, and faced a familiar room in surprise.

Stan's office used to be the room for things that were broken or things Stanford didn't need. Stanley may have moved the things out of the room and dumped them, but Ford knew Stanley would never dump a single thing when he could make money out of it. Stanford hoped Stanley kept the things somewhere…

And he did.

He caught the old copier he had never used sitting in a corner, collecting dust. A sheet was half covering it. Stanford thought if there was one thing Stanley would throw out, it would be this copier. The first time he wanted to use it, it broke down, and he never got to fix it.

He walked up to it and removed the sheet to see the copier, and noticed how much duct tape was on the thing. Maybe Stanley had fixed it and made it work, if so, he was really grateful. He really wanted to see how he had done it. But he had to find out if it even works.

He wondered how he should test the copier, and remembered that he brought the journals with him. So he pulled the third journal out of his pocket and opened to an unimportant page – the gnomes page - to copy. He put it on the copier and pressed the button that he thought would copy the content.

Stanford waited for something to happen. Then he saw a green-ish ray appear which seemed to be analyzing the content on the pages. The copier shook roughly and an A3 paper came out of it. Stanford looked at the paper. There he saw the entire content about the gnomes which he had written in his journal way too long ago. He picked the paper up in amaze, while he left the journal on the copier.

He stared at the paper for a long time and read every bit of it. It was just like he remembered, and just as clear as the journal itself was. He decided to compare it to the original writings in the journal.

He picked up the journal, but noticed something as he saw the cover of the journal.

That six-fingered hand …

He remembered how he had created it. He had placed his hand on the golden sheet and cut the outline around it. He had copied it.

What if he copied his hand again but this time, on the copier?

All Stanford knew after he did so was he was running.

Author's notes: So, I'd had this idea for quite a long time - since the episode Roadside Attraction aired – and I thought 'Hey, what was Ford doing all along in the shack?' it's kind of weird but I've had the entire plot of this and the next chapter in my mind ever since. But I recently managed to make up a good, complete plot for this idea and write it. And I did, or so I think.

I'd love to hear your opinions on this fanfic, and please tell me if you see any errors, typos, etc. so I can fix it.

By the way, this is my first ever fanfiction, so go easy on me if I'm rusty or anything :)

-H80NP