That night, Bill Cipher visited Dipper's dreams.

In the dream, Amanda was over at Dipper's house, sitting on the couch with him. Dipper was telling some stupid story about a prank he pulled in the third grade, and Amanda was laughing like it was the funniest thing ever. The more she laughed, the more Dipper got into his story, and he jumped up onto the couch cushions to make a hilarious point.

"And my friend Ozzie — he laughed so hard that milk came out of his nose!"

Amanda started to laugh, but then she suddenly fell silent.

Dipper frowned. "'Manda?"

She blinked and looked up at him. Her hands were folded primly in her lap.

Dipper deflated. He sat back down on the couch. "Amanda, what's wrong?"

She tilted her head. "Dipper. . ."

"Yeah?"

"Dipper. . . why didn't you save me?"

"What?" Dipper asked. "What do you mean? I saved you. I broke the ice. Right?"

Amanda shook her head sadly. "Are you sure? Are you sure you didn't leave me to freeze?"

"I-I'm sure! Of course I'm sure! Melody and I broke the ice!"

Amanda lifted her head and opened her eyes.

They were yellow.

"Oh, Dipper," she said, staring at him with Babel-like eyes, "how do you know that wasn't just a dream?"

In a panic, Dipper vaulted over the back of the couch, nearly twisting his ankle as he landed. "Bill! Get out of my girlfriend!"

"Relax, Shooting Star, I'm not real," Amanda said calmly.

Then she flopped back onto the couch, unconscious. Her body spasmed as a glowing yellow triangle came floating up from her chest.

"I am, though," Bill said.

"Get out!" Dipper shouted. "Get out of my—"

He stopped, looking around. His house? Wasn't he at the Mystery Museum? Couldn't Bill only talk to people in their dreams?

"I'm dreaming," he realized aloud.

"Yep," Bill said. "Welcome to lucidity!"

Dipper narrowed his eyes. "Get out of my dreams."

Bill put his hands up. "Now, Shooting Star, that's no way to talk to a pal."

"You're right, it's not. Good thing none of my pals are here."

Bill put a hand to his. . . heart? Did he have a heart? Dipper highly doubted it.

"I'm wounded," the demon said. "I came to warn you. Isn't that what pals do?"

Dipper's eyes narrowed further. "Depends on what the warning is. Did you come to warn us about your cult? 'Cause you're too late; we already know about that one."

"No. I came to warn you about your family. Sixer and Pine Tree are not being honest with you."

Dipper rolled his eyes. "Sure they're not."

"They're not. They spent all day down in that basement and discovered so much. The fuel issue was only the tip of what they found."

"Unless they found Stan, I don't really care."

"Oh," said Bill, "I think this will interest you. When that portal turns on, gravity will stop working."

Dipper looked at him warily. "What?"

"Gravity. It's going to go crazy. It'll change directions, it'll change strength, it'll outright disappear sometimes. Your family found this in one of the Journals, and they kept it from you."

Dipper listened to this, trying to wrap his brain around it. Finally, he shook his head. "Maybe they forgot to mention it, but they wouldn't just hide information like that on purpose."

"Wouldn't they?" Bill asked. "Maybe Mabel is having so much fun with her uncle that she doesn't want to let you in on it."

"Sure, and Melody is secretly a member of the Order," Dipper said. "We're not doing all this for fun, Bill, and Mabel wouldn't be petty enough to keep important things from me just because. . . I don't even know why you think she would. Trying to turn me against my family isn't going to work."

"I don't think you understand what's at stake here," Bill said. "Last time this portal was opened, changes in gravity affected the entire town. If you were outside and gravity suddenly started pulling up, you'd go flying into the air. Then it could switch back to normal on you while you're fifty feet high. You'd fall to your death. And it could happen to anyone! Do you really want to be responsible for that?"

Dipper faltered. "I. . . I'll talk to Ford about it."

"Fordsie?" Bill asked. "He won't care! I may not be able to see directly into his mind anymore, but I can see him though you. He's obsessed with getting Stanley back. If that means losing a few townspeople in the process, it's no skin off his nose."

"You don't know that," Dipper said. "He cares about other people, he just pretends not to."

Bill shook his head. "Your naïve faith will get you burned someday."

"Between me and Mabel and Melody, we'll get him to care. We'll figure something out."

"Really?" Bill asked. "What if you have to choose between Stanley's life and the lives of everyone around you?"

Dipper was done with this. "Then we'll choose. Without you. Get out."

Bill stared at him silently for a moment. Then he waved his hand. Dipper's living room changed to the snowy forest around Gravity Rises. "Fine," the demon said. "But before I go, I should probably show you just what you're risking by turning the portal back on."

Dipper's feet left the ground as, suddenly, he began to fall upward.

"When you're deciding," Bill said, floating up alongside Dipper, "think back to this dream. Is the life of a man you've never even met really worth condemning people to this?"

Dipper continued to fall up. This wasn't what he imagined flying to be like at all — if he was flying, he'd have control. But he didn't. He couldn't stop or slow down or change directions or anything. He was just falling.

The force pushing him upwards slowly disappeared, and Dipper came to a stop, floating high above the forest below. His stomach dropped as he realized what Bill was about to do.

"Goodbye, Shooting Star."

Bill snapped his fingers.

And Dipper fell to the earth.

Down, down, down — the longer he fell, the faster he went, until —

"Ahh!" Dipper bolted upright in bed. For a second he sat there, breathing heavily — even though he hadn't physically moved, his body still felt the remnants of freefall. It took him a while to reorient himself, to remember where he was, to realize the fall hadn't been real.

"Mm. . . Dipper?" He couldn't see her in the darkness, but it seemed that his scream had woken Mabel up.

"It's okay, Mabes," he said. "Just a dream."

There was quiet for a moment. Then Mabel gave a half-asleep moan. "Was. . . was it Bill?"

How'd she know that? Maybe she was visited by him too. Or maybe she just figured that he'd be around working mischief in their minds. "Yeah," he admitted. "But I told him off." He hesitated. Should he ask about the gravitational anomalies? It was the middle of the night, and she sounded tired. She may not even remember this conversation in the morning.

It could wait.

"Go back to sleep, Mabes," he said.

The sound of rustling blankets reached his ears. "Mm. . . okay. . . if you do too."

"I will," he said.

Dipper lay back on his pillow, staring up into the darkness. It took him a while to relax enough to fall back to sleep: His body was still tense from the illusion of falling, and his mind wanted to obsess over what Bill had told him about the gravity changing.

No, he told himself firmly. Go to sleep. You won't get anything done thinking about this right now. You can talk about it with Ford in the morning.

But despite his attempts to avoid it, he still kept thinking about it. He didn't want any of that to happen in real life, but Bill said that it would. He could very well be lying, but. . . what if he wasn't? Dipper just kept remembering the feeling of falling. . . .

Finally, he managed to drop back into dreamland. And luckily, Bill did not reappear.

~~~~~

In the morning, Dipper had to fight back the instinct to ask Mabel first thing about what Bill had revealed to him. Then they got down to breakfast, and he didn't want to ruin the mood of the morning by saying anything. He managed to keep quiet all the way until after breakfast — which wasn't long, he knew, but it felt long.

As he sat at the table with Melody gathering up the dishes, Dipper's leg bounced up and down uncontrollably, like it usually did when he had to wait for something. He felt bad putting a damper on the morning, but he couldn't sit on it this anymore.

"So. . . ," he began, "Bill showed up in my dreams last night."

The room seemed to freeze momentarily. Then time resumed, and Melody went back to clearing the table.

"Did he?" Ford said, not sounding surprised in the least. "What did he say?"

"He was trying to turn me against you guys," Dipper said. "Trying to convince me that you were keeping the gravity stuff from us on purpose."

Melody paused. "Gravity stuff?"

"O-oh, right, that — I meant to mention it last night, I really did," Mabel said. "I just forgot until it was too late. Bill told you about it?"

"Yeah," Dipper said. He noticed Mabel was more comfortable saying Bill's name now. That was good. "I don't know how truthful he was being, though."

"Bill can't lie," Ford said. "That doesn't mean he can't deceive — far from it. But he can't directly say anything that is completely untrue." He frowned. "I. . . don't remember how I know that. Anyway. He may still have made it seem one way when it's actually another. Do you remember the exact wording he used?"

Dipper shook his head. "No. How about you just explain it like I've never heard anything about it? Melody doesn't know anything, unless Bill also talked to her last night."

"Nope," Melody called from the sink. "What's this 'gravity stuff'?"

Mabel opened her mouth to explain, but she thought better of it and deferred to Ford with a glance.

"When we activate the portal, it'll mess with gravity," he said bluntly. "It happened last time, so I assume it will happen again. Not until we get the fuel, though."

Melody frowned in confusion. "Mess with gravity? Like. . . we'll be floating around as if we were in space, or something?"

"Sometimes," Ford said. "Gravity pulls down, right? We refer to normal Earth gravity as one gee. But somehow, against all the laws of physics, opening an interdimensional portal changes that. Gravity can increase or decrease at random. Thankfully, it never increased higher than one gee last time, and never decreased lower than. . . negative point-two gees, maybe?"

"Negative?" asked Melody.

Ford nodded. "It changes directions, too. One moment you could be walking across a room, the next you'd find yourself on the wall or the ceiling. We would call upward pulls 'negative' and sideways pulls 'slash'. Slash gees never got very strong, either, but occasionally there would be quick bursts of strong negative or slash gees that would go away as quickly as they came."

Dipper could feel his heart thumping against his ribcage. "So could someone. . . get hurt?" he asked.

"Theoretically, yes," Ford admitted. "I don't remember hearing about any injuries; however, I also stayed inside after the gravitational anomalies started. Something may have happened. I don't remember any funerals."

"You don't remember much of anything," Dipper pointed out. It came out more accusatory than he'd intended.

Mabel put her hand on his arm. He glanced at her; she looked concerned. "What's wrong, Dip?"

Dipper sighed, slouching down in his chair. "After Bill told me about the anomalies, he demonstrated what they were like."

"How?" Ford asked.

"I don't know, by manipulating gravity himself — it was a dream, remember? He could do whatever he wanted. He made me fall up, and then. . ."

Mabel squinted. "I. . . I think I remember you yelling in the middle of the night. Bill did that?"

"Yeah. . . he basically made me fall to my death," Dipper said. "Hitting the ground woke me up."

The kitchen was quiet. "I'm sorry, Dip," Melody said.

"It's fine, it was just a dream," Dipper said. "But I don't want that to happen in real life. To anyone. Is there any way to stop it from happening?"

Ford hesitated, then shook his head. "I don't think so. No way for sure. The anomalies didn't cause much harm last time, from what I recall, and we have to create them in order to rescue Stanley."

"Shouldn't we just. . . warn people?" Melody asked. "The Order wouldn't like that, but even they would have to admit it's safer for people to know what's going to happen."

"We could," Ford conceded. "I don't know how successful that will be, though. And we shouldn't leave the house, not while the Order is after us."

"If we're going to put people at risk to rescue Stanley," Melody said firmly, "they deserve to know about that risk."

"Yeah," Dipper added. Mabel nodded. None of them vocalized the question that now floated through the room: Was rescuing Stanley really worth the risk?

"I agree," Ford said. "But none of us is safe to go outside right now. It wouldn't do to get ourselves captured by the Order — then we wouldn't be able to warn anyone. And I doubt Pacifica would be reasonable enough to let us go for the sake of other people's safety."

"But we're the only ones who know," Dipper said. "Me and you have to go outside to get the fuel anyways, so we should spread the word."

"You and I," Ford corrected automatically. Dipper rolled his eyes. "I suppose we can as a last-ditch option. I'm the only one who knows how to work the portal, though, so I really shouldn't be exposing myself any more than I have to. Maybe if—"

A knock sounded at the door.

For the second time that morning, everyone froze up. Mabel glanced to Dipper with the light of panic in her eyes.

After a tense, deafening silence, Dipper stood up. His chair scraped on the kitchen floor, making his companions jump. "Well, if nobody else is going to answer it, I will," he said.

Ford and Mabel both looked at him like he was insane. "What?" Ford demanded. "No! No one is answering that door!"

"Do you really think the Order would knock?" Dipper shot back. "At least let me go see who it is!"

Ford clenched his teeth, thinking this over. "Fine," he finally said. "But," he added before Dipper got halfway to the door, "don't you dare open it. No matter who it is, you hear me? I don't care if Stanley himself is at that door — you don't open it."

"Okay, okay," Dipper said. He left the kitchen, which led to the entry way, and approached the door. His family watched with heightened tension as he got up on his tiptoes to see out the diamond window set into the wood.

His eyes lit up.

"Dipper, don't open the door!" Ford bellowed. Dipper stopped, blinked, and looked down. He'd been reaching for the knob, not even thinking about Ford's instructions. He put his hand down by his side — but surely Ford wouldn't argue against him opening the door once he knew who was behind it.

"Wh-who is it?" Mabel asked. Her hand anxiously gripped the table.

Dipper grinned. "I think we wanna let him in, Ford," he said.

"It's Robbie."