Mabel Pines awoke long after the sun had risen — which was saying something, considering that the sun rose fairly late in wintery Oregon. She rolled over onto her back and looked up at the splintering ceiling, oddly content. She'd slept well last night, better than most nights these days, and she'd woken up happy. Her foggy mind tried to figure out why that was.

Mabel shot up in bed.

The portal!

They'd gotten the first Journal — they'd escaped the Order — they'd gone down to the basement — Ford had turned on the portal! They were going to rescue Stanley!

Mabel jumped to her feet and ran down from the attic, feet pounding on the stairs. She'd slept in late, Ford was probably already down there!

"Shh, Mabes."

Mabel stumbled to a stop as she saw her brother, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the living room with a pig in his lap. She wasn't used to being quieted by Dipper; usually she was the one telling him to be quiet. "What?"

Dipper's eyes flicked from Mabel to the couch. "You'll wake. . . oh, too late."

Melody Ramirez's head lifted, her eyes peering blearily at Mabel. "Morning," she said, the word punctuated by a yawn.

"O-oh, sorry, I didn't mean to. . . you slept on the couch?" Mabel asked.

Melody sat up and stretched. "Yep, it's my bed when I stay over. Usually I'm the first one awake, so you kids never see me sleeping here, but. . . well, let's just say I was kept up by a certain paranormal researcher."

Right! "Oh, yeah, where's Ford? Is he already down in the basement?"

Melody gave a short laugh. "I sure hope not. He should still be asleep. I finally convinced him to get some shut-eye a few hours ago." She yawned again. "Let him sleep, okay? He needs it."

Though the housekeeper had a very different perspective on sleep than Mabel and Ford did, even Mabel could agree with that. If he really only had fallen asleep a few hours ago, that meant he'd been up for almost twenty-four hours. Ford needed to have a clear mind in order to reactivate the portal.

Plus, Ford being asleep meant that Mabel could go read the Journals.

"Okay," she said to Melody. "Can I go down and get one of the Journals? I can take Dipper with me. I wanna read them when Ford's not using them for the portal."

Melody considered this, then gave a careful nod. "All right. Take Dipper with you, and don't touch anything except for the Journal. Anything," she reiterated. "If Ford wakes up to find that we ruined something, he'll never sleep again. Go in, grab the Journal, come straight back up here. Can you do that?"

"Will do," Mabel said. "That okay, Dip?"

"Yep!" Dipper nudged Waddles off him, then jumped to his feet. "Which one do you wanna grab?"

"The first one," Mabel said immediately. "I want to start from the beginning."

The twins went into the gift shop, opened the vending machine, and took the elevator down to the basement. A friendly hum greeted them as the elevator doors slid open. The portal wasn't all the way on — the doorway to the other dimension hadn't opened yet — but it was in active stasis while it waited for Ford to complete it. Mabel hurried from the elevator to the control station where the Journals lay open, flipping the covers up until she found the first one. She gathered it in her arms and smiled through the observation window at the portal. "Hang in there, Stanley, we're close," she said. Then she headed back to the elevator.

Dipper punched the button, and the elevator rumbled upwards. "Hopefully, Melody went back to sleep," he said. "We should take this up to the attic so we don't disturb her." He shook his head. "Before this morning, I never imagined Melody needing things like sleep. She just seemed to always have the energy to take care of Ford and the Mystery Museum and us, y'know?"

"Yeah," Mabel replied. She was glad she wasn't the only one; seeing Melody half awake on the couch had been kind of shocking.

They went back out to the gift shop, closing the vending machine quietly behind them, and then tip-toed across the living room, with Dipper picking up Waddles on the way. They were halfway up the stairs when Melody mumbled from the couch, "Thanks for thinking of me, kids. Sorry I'm not up yet. Do you think you could get your own breakfast this morning?"

Right, breakfast. Mabel always forgot about breakfast. But now that Melody mentioned it, she was hungry.

"Of course," Dipper said. He and Mabel went back down the stairs and into the kitchen, where he dropped the pig and stuck two pieces of bread in the toaster. He dropped a third piece of bread on the floor for Waddles. "You want jam?" he asked Mabel.

"Sure," she said distractedly. She was staring down at the Journal, torn between wanting to read it right now and wanting to wait until they were settled upstairs. She didn't want anything to disrupt her reading, not even toast popping out of the toaster.

Dipper saw the look on her face. "You can head up, Mabes, I'll bring the toast up in a minute."

She blinked. "N-no, I wouldn't want to start it without you." She wanted him to be there to, well, freak out to when she started reading the first Journal.

So Dipper finished making the toast, put the two pieces on paper plates, spread jam on both, and insisted on carrying both plates so that nothing got on the Journal. With that, the twins headed up the stairs, being careful to step softly so they wouldn't disturb Melody.

Finally, they made it up to the attic. Mabel plopped down on the wooden floor, the Journal on her lap, as Dipper sat nearby and put their plates nearby. He pushed a nosy Waddles away from their food. "You ready for this?" he asked.

"Not really," Mabel said. She couldn't resist a grin as she looked down at the first Journal. "But I'm doing it anyway."

She ran her hand over the cover, opened it, and began to read.

The first Journal was amazing, almost even better than the third. Mabel drank in every word, even the unimportant ones, and spent a long time on each page before turning it. She knew it drove Dipper crazy when she did that, but she couldn't help it — she couldn't rush this. To Dipper's credit, he managed to resist complaining.

The Ford in the first Journal was almost a different person from the Ford in the third. He was so buoyant, so excited, and it showed in both his words and his handwriting — the more excited he got, the more slanted and rushed it was. That enthusiasm hadn't disappeared entirely in the third Journal, but it was more subdued, more mature. Mabel kinda preferred this immature, excitable Ford.

She was so engrossed in the Journal that she didn't hear Ford's footsteps behind her. "Are you enjoying that?"

Mabel jumped and turned guiltily to her uncle. "S-sorry, I was just—"

Ford put up a hand to forestall her. "It's completely fine. I would like to read through the first Journal as well and gain more of my memories, but I've decided to wait until Stanley is safe. If I were you, I would have read it at first chance too."

"Y-yeah." Mabel got to her feet and handed the Journal to its author. "I'm, um, glad you're okay with it. But now we're going down to the basement?"

"I am," Ford said, "and you're welcome to come with me. Though if I kept you down there all day without any sunlight, Melody would have my head. Wouldn't do to lose that before I can rescue my brother." He smiled wryly. "Speaking of Melody, would you please come help me explain why we absolutely cannot open the Mystery Museum until the portal is repaired?"

Mabel's eyes widened. "She wants to open the Museum? Now?"

"Not today," Ford said. "It's far too late for that. She hasn't said anything about opening it tomorrow, either, but better to put a stop to it before it starts. Opening our house to the public is one of the worst possible things we could do right now. I'm sure you know why, and I figure Melody hearing it from you will be more effective than hearing it from me."

"Sure," Mabel said. "I can explain it. But. . . how do you know that I've thought it all through?"

Ford raised an eyebrow. "We have similar thought processes. Are you telling me you haven't thought it all through?"

He had a point.

Mabel, Dipper, and Ford left the attic and started down the stairs. "Hey Ford," Dipper said, about halfway down, "how come you don't mention Stanley in the first Journal at all?"

Ford paused on a step and didn't speak for a long moment. Mabel peered up at his face, and he didn't look sad or anything, just pensive. Like he was trying to remember.

"It's a research journal, not a diary," he finally said. "My first Journal was strictly for research, so I had no need to bring him up. I didn't think about him too much, either — Lee and I were on good terms back then, don't get me wrong. But we only ever talked on our birthday, really. Keeping contact long-distance wasn't as simple as an email in those days. It's honestly a miracle he dropped everything to come help me build the portal." He shook his head. "And look where that altruism got him."

With that lovely damper on the mood, Ford continued down the stairs.

Mabel took a deep breath and followed him. It's okay, she told herself. We're going to save Stan. Then Ford won't have any reason to say depressing stuff like that.

At the base of the stairs, Melody greeted them with a warm smile. She was still in her pajamas — a rumpled old t-shirt over gym shorts — but she looked awake and energized. "Have fun, kids?"

"Yeah," Mabel said. She wanted to say more and talk about how great the first Journal was, but Ford was already talking.

He got straight to the point. "Melody, you do realize we can't open the Mystery Museum until Stanley is safe, right?"

Melody frowned. "I have thought of that — it would be hard to get in and out of the basement if the gift shop was full of customers."

"It's not just that!" Mabel blurted. "Melody, there's a whole cult here in town, and we have no idea who's in it. If we open the Museum, Pacifica could send Order members to spy on us and maybe even sabotage the portal!"

"We need to lock this whole place down," Ford said, "so that no one can get in — or out. Melody, you can either choose to stay with us or go home, but I'm afraid you need to make a choice and stick with it until this is over."

Melody's eyes widened in shock. Mabel knew that look — it was the look she often got when she was overwhelmed or needed to make a sudden decision. "I. . . I'll stay, of course. Someone has to run the house while you fix the portal. But. . . do we have enough food to hole up in the house for who knows how long? We can't just shut ourselves in without thinking it through. We need necessities. We have heat and running water, but what about food? And what if you need a tool to fix the portal that you don't have here at the Museum?"

Ford waved a dismissive hand. "We'll worry about all that later. Right now, let's make sure we're safe, and then if we run out of food or if I need something we can decide what to do about it then. I don't know how long this will take — we could very well need to restock. Or we could get the portal fixed in a few days. I don't know. I'm going down to the lab to find out, and I suspect Mabel wants to come with me. Could you and Dipper go around and make sure every single door and window is locked?"

Melody looked to Dipper. "You good with that?"

"Waddles and I will take the upstairs," he replied.

"Wonderful." Ford let out a breath. "Well, I'd best get down to the basement. After being in disuse for thirty years, who knows what the portal needs?"

He turned and left the room. Mabel hurried after him.

She caught up to him just as the vending machine swung open. "Anything I can do to help, Grunkle Ford?" she asked.

The Author glanced down at her. "I'm not sure," he admitted as they started down the stairs. "The portal still has life, at least, or it wouldn't have turned on last night. I started running some diagnostics after you kids went to bed, but I wasn't able to finish them. That's the goal for today — figure out what we need to do to get Stan back. I'm afraid that, without mechanical training, you'd likely get in the way."

Mabel deflated. So she couldn't do. . . anything? She trudged behind Ford into the elevator.

Ford saw her melancholy reaction and hurried to qualify his statement. "You're more than welcome to come along, though. The company will be nice." The elevator came to a stop, and the doors slid open. Ford stepped out, flashing Mabel a smile. "That's what you can do to help, Mabel — keep me company. Sound good?"

"Y-yeah, that sounds great."

Ford led Mabel to the control station and set the first Journal next to its companions. "Okay," he said, "let's get going."

He looked through the observation window at the portal. "What do we need to do to bring you home, Stan?"