Chapter Text
Blendin walked the axial corridor to the Hall of Debriefing and organised the facts into a sequence he could deliver without hesitation. Floor grids: aligned. Wall glyphs: cycling through session queues 17–29. Air pressure: normal. Chronon density: baseline plus 0.3%. Typical after an anchor-day sweep. None of that mattered to the outcome. He catalogued it anyway. Order calmed the body, precision reduced error.
If he could just get his mouth to work as efficiently as his mind he might have been higher up the chain by now.
He reviewed the file he had already built in his head.
Case: Pines, Mabel (MP-12) and Pines, Dipper (DP-12).
Epoch: Post–secondary graduation window, Gravity Falls, Earth-121.
Trigger: Birthday resonance swell; high-salience pair; prior exposure to apex-class anomaly (Bill Cipher).
Mandate: Routine dampening and observation of decision boundaries around anchor-day; no direct interference beyond calibration queries and compliance checks.
Assignment mode: Solo monitor, per his own petition citing familiarity with subjects and prior supervision credit. Petition approved with conditions: no discretionary tools deployed, no escalation without relay confirmation, no unsupervised vector corrections.
He passed the first sensor arch. It acknowledged his ID, and he continued..
Observation summary: Arrival at Mystery Shack porch, standard temporal aperture. Subjects present, relaxed, discussing near-future plans. Male subject uncertain regarding apprenticeship; female subject verbally supportive, affect bright, masking internal ambivalence, standard for MP-12. Initiated contact under the pretext of a post-birthday audit. Ran wording from the standard template: verify intactness, inventory prospects, test cohesion index. He kept questions open-ended to avoid suggestion effects. Good. That part had followed procedure. Auditors loved their procedure despite the fact that it went out the window when creatures like Bill Ciper showed up.
Deviation point: Asset TT-58 (“temporal metric tape,” restricted use) left holstered. Proximity to MP-12 increased risk. He knew that. He did not re-clip after the second demonstration gesture. He logged that as Negligence, Class C. The tape was removed from his belt without force. No alarms fired; MP-12 has high sleight aptitude when motivated. He located her in the gift shop thirty seconds later. He did not attempt a verbal abort or acknowledge issue due to inability to escalate without a relayed confirmation; DP-12 intervened; physical contest for the case; wrong toggle engaged; forward displacement occurred.
He reached the second arch. Two Enforcement cadets peeled out of a side hall and then decided he wasn’t their problem. He kept walking.
Forward displacement: gift shop reconfigured to “Curiosity House / Museum” schema. Evidence of organisational investment, new signage, improved curation. Ten years pased based on records obtained from device. Tape returned to hand in damaged state: jammed tongue, broken mode switch, hairline crack across faceplate; warm; residual ozone. He did not report up-chain; he contained.
Containment: Stanford Pines present approximately 4 days after chrono desynchronization with “temporal realignment device” (unregistered; energy draw local; risk of authority attention noted by Pines himself). Present and future instances of the twins interacted; cohesion index between present twins increased; separation vector decreased. Device activated; present twins returned to origin epoch minutes after initial departure. Forward branch persisted for locals; forward branch collapsed for subjects. Standard one-branch carryback after localised realignment.
He stepped aside to let a file cart glide past and resumed.
Outcome against mandate: “Routine dampening and observation” failed. “No direct interference” breached by presence plus unsecured tool. “No escalation” maintained briefly then breached by not relaying post-forward displacement. “No discretionary tools” technically not deployed by him; nonetheless, his asset enabled the incident. Responsibility attaches.
He put that in the first paragraph of the oral report.
He assembled the penalty menu in parallel. First-tier: demerits, duty cycles, scrub shifts in the Null Corridor, documentation backlogs. Second-tier: probation, temporary suspension of aperture privileges, retraining. Third-tier, unlikely here but possible with Time Baby in a mood: partial stasis, memory prunes, reassignment to inventory.
He did not slow down.
He added the quantitative layer because auditors wanted numbers. Measurable deviations: DP-12 apprenticeship probability pre-contact: 0.81; post-contact, pre-forward: 0.86; post-forward, post-realignment: 0.59. MP-12 off-site arts enrolment probability pre-contact: 0.77; post-contact, pre-forward: 0.73; post-forward, post-realignment: 0.68. Pair cohesion index pre-contact: 0.64; post-forward, post-realignment: 0.89. Separation risk across first two years post-epoch: reduced from 0.42 to 0.17. Global stability deltas: within tolerance. Cipher residual vectors: unchanged (triangle entity erased in this continuity; latent cult noise persists at background). Net: the world remains intact; the pair’s divergence decreased; monitoring load moves from “separate trajectories” to “entangled trajectory.” Alternative workload.
That was the term he would use: alternative, not heavier.
He partitioned the narrative into debrief sections he knew Time Baby’s aides liked: Pre-Event Conditions, Incident, Containment, Effects on Macro-Continuity, Corrective Plan.
Pre-Event Conditions: high-salience pair, anchor-day swell, dampener pass successful, chrono displacement measured by local subject FP-42. Incident: tape compromised, forward displacement, small facility upgrades observed as consequence of FP-42 and SR-24, no civilian injuries, asset damaged. Effects: vector drift within acceptable corridor; pair’s cohesion rises; risk of future rogue actions by locals increases marginally (Stanford Pines retains data from device; he is already on watchlists). Corrective Plan: schedule micro-adjustments at next three anchor days; deploy passive observers during first academic term; tag TT-58 as scrap; replace with secured version; update guidance on tool carriage when around MP-12.
He reached the antechamber. Doors shut. The chamber smelled of neutral metal. He occupied bench 3, sat straight, and let his hands rest palms-down so the muscle tremor in his left thumb could exhaust itself slightly.
He thought about the petition he had filed to take this sweep alone. He had written that the pair’s file still drew high heat from the Cipher case and thus merited a handler with context. He had noted that he could recognise their tells, de-escalate quickly, and avoid spooking them into defiance. The committee had approved. They had added a line: “No improvisation.” He would not dwell on the irony encoded there. Irony was not actionable.
He considered whether to include the forward branch’s details. He wouldn’t.
He rehearsed two lines he would say exactly:
“Solo monitor failed to keep restricted asset secured; forward displacement ensued; I accept responsibility for asset compromise.”
“Macro-continuity remained within tolerance; local vector drift likely reduces long-horizon volatility associated with this pair; recommend continued observation.”
He reviewed the repair list he had quietly queued already: TT-58 decommissioned; TT-59 issued with dual-lock holster and biometric strip; belt policy reminder circulated; “post-birthday audit” script slightly revised to reduce gestural movement; dampener calibrations bumped by 0.02 for twin anchor-day windows; Stanford Pines flagged for device audit at next available window; no one would execute it soon, but flags built layers; layers produced options.
He built the corrections because if he presented the mess with a more organised version of itself the advisors would have less to complain about.
He debated the sentence he thought to embed near the end: “I petition continued assignment to this pair’s watchlist due to my error in the initiating incident; proximity to the consequence encourages careful follow-through.” Supervisors liked responsibility to remain attached to the employee who had created the work. It made the ledger clean.
He stood in front of the chamber. His mind wandered to what he’d done. The failure he was about to be berated for.
The future had been altered yet again due to the actions of a meddling time agent.
A tiny, tight smirk threatened to break out on his face.
He walked in.