Been writing some 'extra' scenes for Infinitesimal Variations this week, mainly as a form of exercise - trying to build up the writing muscles. These are scenes which always happened, but which I just didn't, in my commitment to sticking to only six narrators (...only six. Ha. Well, everyone knows how long that lasted...) write at the time. On which note: have Example 1, in which Tate McGucket decides to think things over like a calm and rational adult who definitely isn't sentimental and who would definitely never do anything as crazy as contemplate rolling up in your front yard and just shooting you:
If everything held steady, Tate thought - if everything worked the way it was supposed to, then the sun would go down within the next few minutes. If physics were working normally again, according to the rules - in that case, less time stood between him and it getting dark than it had taken him to tell that agent about....
If the numbers weren't lying to him, it was about to be dark. The trouble was, the numbers had already lied to him once today, and that meant he could not rule out the possibility that they would do so again. That he might have to operate without the numbers, at least for a while - and on the worst day possible for that to happen, considering how helpful good numbers were sure to be if he did indeed decide that he was going to go kill a man tonight.
Breathe - in - one - two - three -
Breathe - out - one - two - three -
It had been a long time since he'd needed to resort to an exercise as rudimentary as breathing on a count to center himself. Was it just that he hadn't predicted the earthquakes (how? how could he have not predicted three earthquakes in a single day? He could predict the weather accurately a month in advance even in Gravity Falls; outside of it, he could probably hit a year without even exerting himself too much. He could predict the lottery. The numbers didn't lie, they never had, and they weren't supposed to be capable of it, but somehow, there had been three earthquakes, and he'd never seen them coming - ), he wondered, or would he have found himself confronted with this problem if the only unusual thing to happen had been the conversation with the agent?
Does the name Stanford Pines mean anything to you?
Do you know anything about his relationship to your father?
It was impossible, of course. Stan Pines was the man who had ruined his life? Who had ruined the lives of every member of his family? The Stan out on Gopher Road, the one who just made stuff up to entertain normal people - that Stan Pines? Stanford Pines, of all the people in all the world, was the person who Fiddleford had decided to abandon his wife and son for, all those years ago? His father's Friend - that was Stan Pines?
Impossible, logic assured him.
He stood still beside his somehow still-functional telephone for a long moment, holding his limbs immobile through sheer force of will. The numbers span through his head, almost visible, never giving him any peace, but he ignored them as much as he ignored his desire to destroy something just for the hell of it right now. Finally, he turned stiffly and picked his way across the room which made up the majority of the bait and tackle shop. Found his stool, upside down and several feet away from where it belonged. Picked it up. Carried it back to its proper place behind the counter. Tried to put it down - and, in the attempt, he instead slammed it into the floor, its feet screeching against the wood as it slid almost a foot away from where he had tried to place it.
Breathe - in - one - two - three -
Breathe - out - one - two - three -
Ignoring his now shaking hands, Tate pulled the stool back to its proper place and sat on it, bracing his elbows on the counter in front of him and sticking his fists under his chin as he stared straight ahead, far beyond the chaos of the remains of his business.
He had decided that, if he ever got the chance, he would kill his father's Friend several years ago, just after his mother had died - but just because some fed implied it was Stan, didn't mean that he could just tear off and kill Stan without thinking this through first. Feds did not always get it right. They were far less accurate than his weather predictions. Mistakes everywhere, not this one fluke which meant that something was profoundly Wrong, either with math or with the town. He could not kill a man just because of something a fed hadn't even said outright, but only...implied.
Fiddleford McGucket wasn't really worth killing anyone at all over, if he was to be reasonable about the thing. From what his momma had told him, his father hadn't been of much account even when he'd been sane - always off with his head in the clouds, tinkering with impractical inventions while she brought home the bacon. And, of course, he'd abandoned his family, and hadn't even been man enough to come tell them to their faces that he was doing it, or why. Even aside from that, though, Tate had no particular reason to love his father. Not when Fiddleford, according to everyone, was the source of what it had pleased Momma to call Tate's gifts - that was to say, the numbers, the damned never-ending numbers that made life so boringly predictable outside of a place like Gravity Falls that he'd had to come here just to keep from shooting himself. The numbers that meant he, too, could spiral into...nothing, someday. Just one wrong move, and then -
And yet, he was still Tate's father. And besides - there was more than sentiment in play here. There was also his momma's honor to consider - and avenge - and - all right, maybe she would have gotten the cancer even if Dad had never abandoned them, and maybe it would have killed her just the same - but she'd always talked bitterly about how they could have been rich, if Dad had just applied himself to something useful. Rich people didn't die as much as ordinary people, because they could afford doctors - better ones, too, than anyone living on a schoolteacher's wages ever could....
But he could not kill a man on no more evidence than he had right now. Which meant, of course, that he needed more information, and he needed it quick. How to get it, though? He'd asked around more than once about his father since he'd come up here, but all anyone had ever said was that crazy Old Man McGucket had always been here, and always old, and always crazy. Tate knew for certain-sure that this wasn't true, but he'd had to drop that line of inquiry lest it draw the attention of those culty freaks in town. What was he supposed to do now, then? Just...ask Stan?
Well - why not? As much as Tate hated the numbers, as much as he wished they would go away and let him live without knowledge of so much of the future and the constant fear of going insane the way Fiddleford had - as much as all that was true, they did come in useful, sometimes. He attributed his ability to usually figure out when people were lying to him to the numbers. He could count the little movements in their faces and eyes, the things most people - or so he had read - didn't usually notice. Wasn't any law against driving down Gopher Road at this time of evening and stopping to ask a neighbor a question or two, was there? Not even in the absurd legal codes of this hell-town. And it was in the Constitution of the United States that there was no reason why he shouldn't have a gun or six with him at the same time, in case of needing it. Nobody could say a word against him going out there and seeing what he could find out. If Stan hadn't taken his father away from them, driven the old man insane, and then discarded him like he was less than nothing - well, in that case, no harm done, except for a waste of time both of them could have used to pick up the messes the earthquakes had made of their places of business. And there were worse things - far worse things - than wasting a little time.
Slowly, Tate sat up straight and nodded to himself. That was what he was going to do. Now that he had a plan, he felt better, and so only paused long enough to load a shotgun before walking straight out to his truck with the weapon in question in his hands.
It was not his best gun, that shotgun. In fact, it was near enough to one of the worst. It had been his granddaddy's shotgun, back in Tennessee: at one point, the second-most valuable thing (after the cow) that Granddaddy had owned. He'd given it to Fiddleford when Tate's parents had decided to go west, an attempt - like so many attempts Tate's mother had made to him over the years, when she'd still been alive - to have some kind of connection with the son he'd never understood even a little bit; Fiddleford had presumably brought it to California for the same reason, but he hadn't taken it to Gravity Falls, though, and so it had ended up with Tate more or less by default after his mother had died. He'd never messed with it much for fear of it blowing up in his face, given its extreme age - but if he was ever going to use it, then he thought the present occasion seemed appropriate.
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