#future dipper

“Way I heard it, some special-time-forces guys brought them in from twenty-snyeventy-sixteen. A bit in the future, even for us.”

“Oh yeah… That’ll be the year the time-rebellion starts, won’t it?”

“Yeah. And from the time-specialists’ report, it looks like these two are right at the center of it… Stealing time machines, freeing time-slaves, sticking their nose into the baby’s secrets… Says they’ve escaped time-arrest on multiple occasions, and perfectly match two files from the imperial watch list.”

“Woah… Time-rebellion leaders then?”

“Time-rebellion something. They don’t look like leaders.”

“…What’s the procedure for this? We can’t just lock them up, since they’d just time-travel to an hour or so beforehand and spring themselves… Shouldn’t we… Head back to their origin points and make sure their parents never meet? Or make them grow up to be janitors or something? Or imprison their younger selves before they become who they are?”

“Well, people like this usually guard their own pasts pretty heavily, so it would be a pretty dangerous mission if we were to go. And besides, look! We don’t even know their origin! They just showed up one day in the middle of the things, and started fighting. We can’t trace them, we can’t identify them… They could have come from anyone, anywhere, anywhen…”

“Well… not anywhen. Redheads are extinct by our time, so the woman would have to be from the twenty-eighth century or before…”

“Yeah…”

“…Hey waitatimeminute, hold on, didn’t we have a ‘Pines’ boy and girl a couple years ago? Blendin drug them in from the 21st century, didn’t he?”

“Yeah he did… Lost Globnar to ‘em, can you believe it?”

“Ha ha, nope. Man, what a loser. Anyway, ya think they’re the same people?”

“That would be a crazy time-coincidence, but no. I already checked their records; they’ve got different names. Those were siblings: ‘Dipper’ and ‘Mabel’. This is a couple: ‘Mason’ and ‘Wendy’.”

“Ugh… Well, what’s the woman’s maiden name?”

“Don’t know.”

“Hmm.”

“And it’s probably all just aliases anyway.”

“Yeah…”

“I mean, what kind of a name is ‘Pines’? That’s just a type of tree.”

“Yeah. And ‘Wendy’ and ‘Mason’ aren’t real names either. One is a 20th-century restaurant, and the other is a job as old as bricks…”

“Ha ha… Yeah…”

“Yeah…”

“Huh… Y’know… I kind of respect these two.”

“Yeah, well I think it’s cool too. Being all stealthy and biz, like-… Wait, what are you saying?”

“I mean the rebellion itself!”

“Oh, come on Dundgren, you don’t mean that…!”

“No YOU come on, Lolph! Of course I mean it! Look around you: the world is being ruled by a baby, he throws his citizens into death battles for no reason, he lasers people when he feels like it, his dirty diapers are a mounding environmental hazard, and if anybody speaks up about it, he throws tantrums that measure on the Richter scale!”

“You can’t talk like that!”

“Just think about it, man! We’re living in a time of ‘peace’ right now… But the rebellion WILL come with its war in snyeventy-sixteen, and when it does… What side will you be on?”

“Shut the t**e up! Walls have ears…”

“I know! I know but… But… But look at this world… Don’t you think we ought to have it better? Don’t you think… I’m thinking of my family, Lolph. Thinking of the kids… They deserve better than to be ruled by a child… And for that matter, a child deserves better than to be alone with this type of responsibility… Wouldn’t it be better if he left Earth? Found his own people? And let us rule ourselves? With democracy or freedom or some of those old-fashioned ideas…?”

“I don’t know man… I don’t know… Just file these two away and get on with it, huh?”