Ford lay in his bed, staring up at the ceiling. The morning grew late, and yet. . . Ford just lay there. As soon as he'd woken up, he'd frantically recorded his dream in his dream journal. Then. . .

Then he'd realized just how bizarre the entire thing sounded. He'd had to lie back down for a while after that.

"I can help, Sixer," the creature had said. "I've been keeping an eye on you. You're really something special, aren't you?"

This creature — this Bill Cipher — claimed to be a powerful being who could only visit people in their dreams. He said he had a lot of knowledge, including most — if not all — of the answers Ford had been searching for. But why now, why at the time Ford needed it the most? Was this just a hallucination from his tired mind? Ford knew he was high-strung, but he had half a mind to declare himself insane for fabricating something like this!

A hesitant knock sounded at his door.

"St-Stanford?"

Ford sat up. Was it truly that late? He was usually the one waiting for Fiddleford, not the other way around.

"Just a moment," he called. Maybe some human interaction would do him some good, after these crazy dreams. He got up, got ready, grabbed his third Journal, and pulled open the door.

Even though it'd been a few minutes, Fidds stood outside Ford's door like he hadn't moved whatsoever. His face was drawn with worry — not an unfamiliar expression for Fiddleford, but certainly unusual this early in the day.

"Fidds? You okay?"

Fidds started — honestly, everything startled this man. "Yes. I-I mean, no. I-I-I mean — did you see him too?"

Ford's stomach lurched. "See who?"

"B-Bill Cipher."

For a moment, Ford just stared at his research partner. "Where. . . where did you hear that name?" Perhaps — perhaps it was a name Ford had heard before, in waking life — perhaps he wasn't crazy—

"In my dreams. Did he. . . did he visit you?" Fidds gave Ford a hesitant, but curious, look. "He said he was going to."

Ford frowned. "Yes. . . yes, he did. Have you spoken to him before? How long have you known him?"

A curtain of guilt fell over Fidds' face. "J-j-just this week. I've been t-talking to him the past couple nights, a-and I was. . . I was too afraid to tell you. I'm sorry."

Well, Ford couldn't blame him — it's not like Ford had been planning on sharing his strange dream; it made sense that Fidds would likewise keep them to himself. "What has he said to you?" he asked. "Is he legitimate?"

Fidds nodded slowly. "I-I think he's the real deal," he said. "A-a-after all, he showed up in both our dreams, and we ain't never talked about him before, have we?" When Fidds got nervous, he tended to slip back into his natural Southern drawl.

Ford shook his head. "We haven't," he replied. "I. . . I guess he is the 'real deal,' as you say — it wouldn't be too hard to believe in a place such as this — but. . ." He put a hand to his head. "I don't know, it just seems too good to be true."

"I guess so," Fidds said. "But — but Stanford! Do you know what this means? We can finally get our answers! If this creature — this muse, if you would — wants to help us, then I say we take him up on the offer!"

"Muse. . . ," Ford said. Bill had used that terminology to refer to himself, too. He'd made it sound like he only offered his service to the most brilliant of people. And, well — Ford qualified under that umbrella, if he did say so himself.

"Okay," he said. "You're right. Let's take him up on his offer."

And that was the beginning of Ford's friendship with Bill Cipher.

Later that week, Bill described the concept of the multiverse: that the creatures in the area had all come from different dimensions and were congregated here. He suggested building an interdimensional portal to find their origins. It was amazing! Ford had, of course, considered the theory of alternate realities — which scientist hadn't? — but he'd mostly dismissed it as a whimsical fantasy, impossible to prove. Now — now, Bill was not only confirming the wild idea, but he was offering his assistance in accessing these alternate dimensions!

Forget using the new basement for whatever Fidds had planned, Ford decided. They needed to dedicate the huge cavern solely to this new project! "Just think of it," he said excitedly to Fidds one day. "Another world, right in our basement!"

They got to work. The Valentinos finished construction and helped the scientists move parts and machinery downstairs. They added a pipe that ran from the surface to a large fuel tank in the basement, built into a totem pole that boasted local Native American designs. "It's a touch of culture," Ford told Fidds cheekily. With the prospect of success, Fidds thought wryly, Ford sure was acting more cavalier with his money.

Fidds had been right about the fixation, too: Ford focused on almost nothing else after the commencing of the portal project. He did pull together resources about lucid dreaming and other sleep techniques, though. "Perhaps if we trained ourselves to meditate, and slip into a dream state that way," he'd say, "then Cipher could communicate with us more than just in the dead of night."

Between the mindfulness training, the basement construction, the portal construction, and late nights talking calculus or theoretical physics with Ford, Fidds hardly had any time for the memory gun. Thankfully, though, he had more financial freedom to buy parts. He was in charge of finding and obtaining machinery for the portal; if some of that money went to parts for the memory gun, then Ford was none the wiser.

Ford spent the nights conversing with Bill, the early mornings writing down the dreams and practicing mindfulness, and the days working out the calculations for the portal. Soon, the lab was filled with stacks of paper, with whiteboards full of hasty equations, with sticky notes threatening to lose their adhesive backing and flutter to the ground. "In some ways," Ford said once, when he was drunk on the thrill of scientific discovery, "it's better that my muse can only communicate with me in my sleep. That way, I'll actually get some!" The eager scientist was delighted that, with his nighttime conversations, his sleeping hours could be as useful as his waking ones.

For the better part of a year, Ford and Fidds worked steadily on the portal. Fidds slowly but surely progressed on the memory gun, too. In the beginning of 1981, he found himself in want of test subjects. It certainly wouldn't do to make himself forget things — that would make Ford extremely suspicious. And who knew what ill effects the memory gun might have in this stage?

He hesitated to express this concern to Percy, whose solution he suspected — and disliked. But Bill quickly confronted him about this. "Tell Percy what you need," he ordered. "You have to test the gun, or you can't continue with its development."

Well, Fidds' lord was right. And Percy suggested exactly what Fidds had feared: testing the gun on the townspeople who were brought down for a memory wipe. "It'll be fine," he assured the nervous inventor. "Gaston will be there to record your results — and if the gun doesn't work, he'll wipe the memories himself."

So it was that Fidds, after spending his days working on the portal with Ford, would spend his nights in the dim halls of the Order, testing his gun on unwilling human subjects.

The first few weeks were disastrous. In the first trial, the beam of the gun hadn't been focused properly, so Fidds knocked himself, the townsperson, and Gaston unconscious for hours. Early models of the gun also made the victim distractible and weary for days afterward — and, according to Gaston's observations with his amulet, didn't even wipe the intended memory!

The most interesting — and guilt-ridden — side effect was on other areas of the brain besides memory. Once, when a local named Susan Wentworth was brought to the Order, the memory gun damaged her left eye, leaving it permanently closed. Gaston quickly wiped her memory of the entire ordeal and sent her home to wake up clueless as to her new vision defect. But damage had still been done — noticeable damage that couldn't be fixed with a simple memory wipe. Fidds had avoided the Order for some time after that incident, consumed as he was by the guilt of this unintended harm.

But eventually he had to go back, had to keep working. He was getting there, he could do this, he knew he could, he just had to keep trying —

Where Fidds saw Ford's fixative tendencies, he was blind to his own.

As the year went on, Ford became more and more suspicious of his assistant. Fidds began to disappear nightly, sometimes during the day, always claiming to need more supplies (as if Gravity Rises had places to obtain such things) or going to his knitting club. At first, Ford was just annoyed by the lack of help, but that annoyance helped him notice things. How Fidds would sometimes fiddle with a strange-looking gun when he thought Ford wasn't looking. How he'd occasionally come home looking far more dejected than a knitting club would presumably cause. And, especially, how he'd never actually take yarn with him when he left the lab.

In fact, Ford hadn't seen a homemade sweater or scarf from Fidds for some time — since before they started working on the portal. Was he actually going to a knitting club? What was going on?

In the summer of 1981, a few weeks after they'd obtained fuel from Crash Site Omega with the help of the minotaurs, Ford investigated the mystery. Fidds left for his knitting club, taking nothing but that strange gun of his; after a few minutes, Ford followed.

Fidds was naturally jumpy, and this trait did not disappear as he walked down the streets of Gravity Rises. This meant that Ford had to take plenty of evasive measures to remain unseen. As he hid from his best friend, he doubted what he was doing. He knew he could be quite paranoid. Was he really sneaking around, following his friend to a simple, relaxing pastime? Perhaps the gun was a new invention of Fidds to revolutionize the knitting community. That seemed like something Fidds might do.

But Ford kept following. He just had to make sure. He'd discover that his friend wasn't hiding anything from him, and he'd laugh at himself for being so suspicious.

"Hey, Mister, why are you wearing a turtleneck in the summer?"

Ford stopped. A boy of about ten was ostentatiously pointing to his red turtleneck as his friends all whispered and giggled. The situation was so unexpected that Ford let it catch him off guard. "What?"

"And he's got that big coat, too!" said a little girl. "Aren't you boiling in that?"

By then, Ford had recovered from his momentary stupor. "No, no I'm not," he said curtly. And he walked away from the kids, picking up his pace so he wouldn't lose Fidds.

It was too late. Fidds was gone. Ford looked around the street, trying to discern where his friend could have disappeared to. The kids came up behind him, pestering him with questions until he finally fixed them with such a stalwart glare that they went running. He sighed and rubbed his forehead.

Didn't Fidds tell him once where the club met? Ford racked his memory as his eyes raked the surrounding town. Eventually, they landed on the library, and he remembered.

He made his way to the library, rehearsing excuses in his head. If Fidds saw him, he'd certainly wonder why Ford had come. Everything from a fire in the lab to a desire to join the club ran through Ford's mind. Eventually he decided he'd just wing it, if it came to that.

But when he entered the library, he didn't see Fidds anywhere. He went to the circulation desk and inquired after the knitting club. The lady sitting there looked at him like he was crazy.

"There is a knitting club, yes?" Ford asked. "One that meets here at night?"

"No," the woman said slowly. "I suppose if you wanted to start one, you could." She glanced at his turtleneck, as if appraising the workmanship.

"I have a friend who attends a knitting club. I'm fairly certain I remember him telling me that this was the meeting place."

She shook her head. "No knitting club. Would you like to find a book on the subject?"

"I'm fine, thanks." Ford left the circulation desk, walking farther into the library. So he'd either forgotten where the club met, or Fidds had lied. But Ford wasn't one to remember things incorrectly, and Fidds had been increasingly jumpy lately. . . .

He walked through the entire library: It was small, only a single story. No sign of Fidds. He must be in another building. Ford sighed in frustration and went back outside into the warm night air. Now that those bratty kids mentioned it, he was feeling quite warm in his getup. He draped his trenchcoat over his arm and started back to the lab.

Now he knew. Fidds was hiding something. Fidds, who'd given up a career in computers to come here with Ford. Fidds, who hesitated to kill even an annoying housefly.

Fidds, who had kept Bill Cipher a secret from Ford.

Well, he'd hidden Cipher out of fear, hadn't he? Just as he'd hidden his dream journal, three years ago. This was probably another situation like that, where he thought Ford might not approve of something.

"Hey, Fidds," Ford said out of the blue one day. He didn't want to let slip that he suspected anything, but he did want to reassure his friend. "If there's anything else you're afraid to tell me — like with Cipher — you can tell me. I support you, you know."

Fidds stared at him with wide eyes, then nodded and forced out a smile. "Um, th-thanks. I got everything off my chest with Cipher, though."

I doubt you would support my shooting people in the head every night, the engineer thought with a pang of guilt.

Ford just nodded, and they kept working. In his mind, though, Ford was troubled. Well, maybe Fidds just needed time to come to his senses. Ford respected his friend's privacy; he could wait.

The summer waned, and the portal progressed, but Fidds never said a word about his so-called knitting club. Ford's instincts screamed at him to confront Fidds about it, but he hesitated. What if Fidds left? Where would Ford's interdimensional project be then?

So he kept his peace, though he became increasingly worried. What if Fidds was doing something dangerous? What if he hurt himself? What if he hurt Ford? Was Ford safe, being alone in the lab with Fidds for hours, days on end?

He never shared his misgivings with Bill. Bill was just a business partner, and Ford didn't want anything to impede the progress of their project. Discovering new worlds, new universes, was far more important than some paranoia between research partners.

But as time went on, Ford felt increasingly unsafe, and increasingly unsure of what to do. He couldn't kick Fidds out; he needed him. He couldn't move out himself; it was his house! But what could he do to protect himself against potential problems?

Then one day, as the heat of August was beginning to cool off into the squalls of September, Ford got a phone call.

"Hi, Sixer, long time no talk! Hey listen, do you think I could borrow some of that fancy grant money for a business investment?"

Ford rolled his eyes. Of course that would be why Stanley called his twin brother. Ford's twin was a few states away in Utah, trying to start a chain of coffee shops in a place largely populated with people who religiously did not drink coffee. Or so Ford had heard when the brothers last talked in spring.

"For your coffee business?" he asked. "I'm telling you, Lee, that's not going to work."

"Yeah, I know, I figured that out," Lee replied. "I got run out of Utah, actually. Well, good riddance to you, ya high-riding, holier-than-thou—"

"Stan," Ford cut in before his brother could insult his failed customers any further. "My grant money is being used for science. Not coffee, or whatever else. What crazy idea do you have now?"

"Vacuums!" The word came with a burst of static over the phone line. "I'm here in California, near Shermie's place, and there's a real need for quality vacuums here. Just give me some money to get me started and I'll be rich in no time!"

Ford sighed. "Go ask Shermie for money."

"Tried that. He said he needs his money to 'look after his wife and kids' or some such nonsense like that. Seemed annoyed to see me, to tell you the truth." Lee then turned on his marketing voice. "C'mon, Sixer, whaddaya say? I'll pay you back for the grant money as soon as I can. We could even get Fiddsy to tinker with the vacuums, make something people would fall over backwards to buy!"

What nonsense. "Fiddleford and I are working very hard on a project that's much more important than vacuums, Stanley." Though, as Ford gave an appraising look to the carpet beneath his feet, he did have to admit that it could probably stand to be cleaned.

"You leave me no choice, then," Lee said dramatically. "I'll just have to come up there and bother you about it until you give in."

"Yeah, and how'd that work with Shermie?" Ford said dryly.

But then a lightbulb went off in his head. Maybe a third person was exactly what he needed to keep Fidds in check.

"Actually," Ford said slowly, "that's a great idea."

"Really?" Lee sounded surprised; it wasn't often that Ford approved of his ideas.

"Yes," Ford said. "I have a bit of a problem that I could use your help with. Why don't you come to visit?"

AN: For the record, I currently live in Utah. No matter what Stanley says, we're generally very nice people here - I promise XD