Together, the five of them traveled down a series of
stairs and approached an elevator. To the left of this elevator was a control
panel bolted to the wall. Opening the panel, Stan revealed a keypad, a small
LED screen, and two buttons with neon green arrows labeled on them, pointing up
and down. Stan entered a code of four hieroglyphic symbols before pressing the “Down”
button. The elevator door opened, allowing Stan and the agents inside, and took
them down three floors. They arrived within the subterranean level of the
Mystery Shack, which consisted of a laboratory room filled with retro
futuristic looking computers, gadgets, and machines, all of them constantly
working.
At the end of the room was
a desk with many electronic devices and a strange glowing symbol etched in on
the side. On this desk was a picture of Stan’s nephew and niece, Dipper and
Mabel, and just below it was a shelf containing a series of books in which Stan
hid one burgundy-colored book with various rips and tears, most noticeably a
huge piece missing in the upper right hand corner. It had two gold binder lines
on its spine, and its three remaining corner-covers were gold as well. In the
center of the cover was a gold hand with six fingers and the number “1” printed
in the middle. Its pages were seemingly worn, and it held various page markers.
Stan took two more books out of the shelf – one labeled “2” that was
burgundy red with three gold-colored corners in the front and none in the back,
and two gold-colored lines on book’s spine (it appeared to be in somewhat
better condition than the book labeled “1,” with only slight damage); and
another labeled “3” that was also burgundy-colored and had various rips and
tears on the cover due to age, with various alchemist symbols on the back. Stan
opened each book to specific pages and combined them to reveal the blueprint to
a strange, complex machine that looked alien in origin to Ar, Em, and Chrissy.
“Is that…a Stargate?” Ar
questioned.
“Ehh, something like that,” answered Stan, who proceeded
in entering a code into a complex console on his desk. As he did, the agents noticed something
light up beyond the small, squared window at the desk. They saw it to be another
room, which was housed for a device with a large, inverted metal triangle with
lights dotting along its edge. There was a large hole in the center and symbols
encircling it. The bottom tip of the triangle was connected to a base with many
large thick cords that in turn connected to two circular platforms embedded
into the ground.
Noting the symbols,
Chrissy asked, “What do these weird hieroglyphs say?”
“They represent the
Behenian fixed stars,” Ess replied, “a selection of fifteen stars considered
useful for magical applications in medieval astrology.”
Chrissy’s eyes widened
with amusement. “Awesome.”
Stan and the agents entered
the room, and he approached a large lever that he used to switch the device on.
It sparked to life, lighting up everything from the triangle to the platforms after
a series of electrical sparks and flashing blue lasers that interconnected. Ar,
Em, and especially Chrissy were all astonished by the alien machine.
“W-What is it?” Chrissy
inquired. “Is it really a Stargate?”
“You people watch too many
Kurt Russell movies, you know that?” Stan criticized. “It’s called a Multiverse
Gate – or, at least, that’s what Ess
calls it. He’s used the thing long before I even discovered it.”
Chrissy’s eyes refocused
on Ess, surprised by the reference to his longevity and experience for the
second time since they arrived at the shack. Meanwhile, Em had been focused on
the Multiverse Gate, the name of which brought a bit more interest to her than
the device itself. “Multiverse Gate? That can only mean this machine can open a
gateway to infinite new worlds!”
“And that is exactly the
reason I’m going to use it.” Ess
remarked. He then turned his attention to Stan and asked, “Are the coordinates
I gave you years ago still in place?”
“Oh, yeah.” Stan confirmed
with a smile.
Ess then turned to Ar, Em,
and Chrissy – their stunned, astonished, and bemused faces lit by the machine
and reflected in the dark lenses of Ess’s sunglasses. “I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?”
Chrissy asked, but her inquiry went unheard by the supposedly “young” agent. It
was very possible that he deliberately ignored her to avoid providing a direct
answer. She watched him step onto one of the two glowing platforms and have his
entire form converted into a ball of bluish light that was sucked directly into
the portal within the triangle. Shortly after his departure, she turned to Stan
and repeated her question in different context: “Where is he going?”
“He’s just taking a short
trip back home.” Stan cryptically responded.
Chrissy frowned under the
belief that the agent was from Earth. The sudden revelation that he was not
made him even more of an enigma to her. “And just where is his home?”
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