Archive of Our Own ^beta

Grian hummed, putting the final touches on his sheep farm. He stepped back, examining his work. It was good enough for him—probably not good enough for some hyper-efficient redstoner hermit (not that he knew any of those) but more than acceptable for his little cave. 

Satisfied, he wandered over to his chest monster and began scrounging through the scattered shulker boxes. It was tragic that Pearl actually thought she could get him truly organized. He’d tried it before, and it never quite worked out, so he liked to think it was just the universe’s will for his items to be chaotic, rather than any personal failing on his part. 

He started selecting blocks carefully, sticking to a neutral gray palette. He wanted to clean up the cave’s interior and start to texture it some, so it looked a little bit less like rough hewn stone and a little more like a place he spent significant parts of his day in. 

The rift buzzed quietly in the background. 

Grian felt watched. He was pretty good at knowing when he was being watched—he had experience in it, you see. It was like a physical presence looming over you and dragging you down, leaving the hairs on the back of your neck to rise. 

Grian turned around. 

Bzzt-click!

A little chiming sound followed the distinct sound of a dispenser, and Grian sighed. 

He looked up at Grumbot, who looked rather pensive. He had limited expressions and movement, so it always impressed Grian how well he managed to convey emotion. Guess he’d got that from Mumbo, though. Grian could design a nice-looking robot but he lacked the skills to truly bring it to life. 

Slowly, he walked over and fetched the paper, feeling Grumbot’s mechanical gaze on him every step of the way. He read the message aloud. 

“Where is my dad? ” he read off. “Grumbot, I’m right here. What do you need?”

There was a flurry of whizzing and clicking, and then another paper popped out of the machine. 

NO.

“No?” Grian echoed. “What do you mean no?”

You are Father 1

Another paper clicked out onto the ground. 

I WANT MY DAD

“Oh,” Grian said softly. “Oh.”

Right. Because Grumbot had two parents, and Grian was just one of them. He was the one Grumbot didn’t like, the one who was apparently relegated to being “father” instead of dad. He remembered when Grumbot had referred to both he and Mumbo as his dads, but…that wasn’t the same Grumbot as the one who sat in front of him right now. 

“I’m, uh, sorry Grumbot, but he isn’t here right now.” There was another mechanical whirl, this time of the angry sort, and Grian leapt to reassure him. “He’s fine, he’s fine! He’s just not here right now. I’m really sorry. I know you probably want to see your dad.”

Not ‘your other dad’ though. Grian had apparently been kicked from that position, and he didn’t even know what he’d done. He probably deserved it though, whatever it was, if for no other reason than some sort of karmic punishment for all the other times he’d somehow managed to escape at the last second without facing the consequences of his actions. 

There was silence for a moment. Caves were louder than you might think, if you ever found yourself sitting quietly in one. Grian could hear the steady drip-drip of water from the stalactites, and the little splashes as they met shallow pools on the floor. He could hear the thrum of the rift and the faint whirring of Grumbot’s fan. He could hear himself breathe, his own heart beat, and the rush of wind from the opening above him to the outside world. 

Finally he broke the silence. “I miss him too, you know.”

He did. He missed Mumbo. He missed going over to his base to terrorize him, and missed coming back home to a prank of his own Mumbo had set up. He stepped out of his base every day only to look across the bridge at the outline where Mumbo had been supposed to build. He supposed it was time to put his own buildings over there, but he wasn’t ready yet. 

Did you know that this was the first time since Grian had joined Hermitcraft that Mumbo hadn’t lived right next to him? That sort of loss is hard to compare. 

And yet, it’s not like he was gone forever or anything. 

Bzzt-click!

Grian fetched Grumbot’s paper. 

CAN YOU FIND HIM

He sighed. “No, Grumbot,” he said. “Mumbo’s fine. He’s off vacationing. He’s okay, he just said he was going to take a break to see other things.” He held off a snort at that wording—taking a break to see other things nearly sounded like the words a scorned lover might say about their partner who left and said it was time to “see other people.”

Hm, Mumbo would’ve laughed at that. 

Another paper. 

DO YOU KNOW WHERE MY DAD IS

Mumbo had been going to a lot of places. He’d visited other worlds and also spent some time on his own personal servers just to chill out. Grian had checked in a few times over the past several months and normally Mumbo was doing something different each time. He hadn’t spoken to him too much, though, because he didn’t want to get in the way of Mumbo relaxing. He didn’t want to guilt him into coming back any earlier than he wanted. 

“Um, not right now,” Grian said. “Probably off somewhere having fun, I guess.”

I WANT TO SEE HIM, the next note read. 

The atmosphere in the room changed. Maybe it was his all-caps messages, but Grumbot seemed a little ominous as of late. Maybe he was going through some robot-teen phase. Grian didn’t actually know how old he was supposed to be, but he knew better than to bring it up to him. 

The water from the stalactites dripped a little faster and the rift buzzed louder. Caves were noisy. 

“So do I,” Grian said, and set back to work on his flooring. 

Bzzt-click! A new note. 

I CAN FIND HIM. 

“Um,” Grian said. “You don’t need to do that, Grumbot. He’s fine, he’s just on vacation.” 

I FOUND HIM. 

The hairs on the back of Grian’s neck rose a little and he found himself unconsciously stepping back, positioning himself with his back to the stone instead of the rift. 

“That’s nice,” he chuckled. “I can send him a message for you, if you want?” Not that Mumbo even knew about Grumbot Prime’s existence. Grian would have to do some explaining—or some lying. “If you tell me what you want to say I can probably organize some sort of chat with Mumbo. I think he’d like to see you.” Probably would have a heart attack that Grumbot had made it out of his box in S7, more likely. 

NO.

“No?” Grian said nervously. He hazarded a sideways glance at the rift, now new-and-mysteriously-improved with a portal. He had a vision of an angry Grumbot bringing dozens of Mumbos from different timelines out of that portal, and promptly decided he wouldn’t be able to handle that many. One Mumbo was enough, thank you. 

Bring him to me.  

Suddenly, the rift flared to life, the colors brightening until it illuminated the entire room in a washed out white-purple haze, blinding Grian. The sudden shock of light stunned him and he averted his eyes, the portal leaving behind littling floating afterimages of color in his vision. The portal hummed louder. 

“No,” Grian said. “No, Grumbot, listen—I’m not going through that portal, no matter how tempting that button is, and I’m not going to just fetch Mumbo for you. He’ll come back when he’s ready, not sooner.”

GO . 

Grian blinked. He was suddenly right next to the portal. 

“What—”

He blinked again, and the suddenly those dazzling colors weren’t just lighting up the room, they were behind his eyes, bending and swirling and moving and making him gag and—

There was a thud and the swirling stopped. Grian stopped too—being conscious, that is. Grian closed his eyes, and the next time he opened them, he was in a place far too familiar.

Grian woke up to the sound of a pesky bird. His head pounded, but he dragged open his eyes all the same. The small parrot sat on a branch a few meters above his head, and watched him with beady eyes, like it was wondering if he was even alive.  

He was laying on the floor of a dense forest. The light was dim and dappled, and he couldn’t see approximately what time it was since the tall trees blocked out most of the sky. The trees were too dense to fly out of—unlike the much smaller pesky birds that populated them, Grian’s wings were very large.  

“Where—” Grian started, biting off the end of the word with a groan. “Ugh. I haven’t been in a jungle in so long.”

He sat up quickly, feeling his head spin. The pesky bird flew off, startled by his sudden movement, and maybe a little satisfied that the strange creature it found on the forest floor was in fact alive. 

Grian stood up, and took in his surroundings. Not that there was much to take in, since the visibility was fairly obstructed in every direction. He pulled his communicator out of his pocket and turned it on, but the only thing on the screen was a large red banner that read “DISCONNECTED.”

“Ugh,” Grian said. He checked his inventory, and was thankful to see it hadn’t been wiped. He pulled out some water and drank it. Hopefully that would help take the edge off his headache for a bit. 

“I guess I need to just pick a direction,” he said. He didn’t have the slightest clue where he was. He didn’t recall any nearby jungles, so he must have been pretty far out from spawn. And without his communicator, he couldn’t ask for any help. But if he got out of the jungle then perhaps he could orient himself cardinally and go from there. 

So he picked a direction, and began to walk. It was slow going, and he often had to use his sword to slash at vines or leaves in his way. Other areas were dim and nearly completely blocked from the sun by trees, but mostly free of vegetation on the forest floor. Grian liked those the best. 

After about 15 minutes of walking, he spotted a structure in the distance. It looked like some sort of jungle temple rising out of the forest, but Grian recognized that its structures were definitely manmade—or at the least, more recently manmade than a common jungle pyramid might have been. He walked up to it, and shoved aside a low-hanging branch to get his first good look at the structure. 

He froze. No. It couldn’t be. 

Well, he knew where he was now. 

“It’s the Hermit Challenges place that Iskall built,” he said. “It’s got the—the lamps, and the chests, and our heads, and the bell- ”

He stared at it, physically feeling his brain stutter and reboot. He’d nearly forgotten about HERMIT CHALLENGES!!! (spoken after dive-bombing someone and in lieu of real explanation) and this had thrown him right back to Season 7. He stared at it some more like it would potentially change something, or dissolve the scene in front of his eyes like some advanced hologram, but it didn’t. They never did end up filling up every lamp on the board, did they?

Grian swallowed hard against the lump in his throat. So, what does this mean? Grian doubted anyone would have just created a replica of Hermit Challenges on the S9 world, and even if they had, it would have been pretty difficult to get the Bumbo Baggins head with Mumbo’s absence for most of the season. 

Which led him to the next, slightly more improbable explanation: he was actually on Season 7. 

And he knew why. 

“Grumbot,” he whispered. “Grumbot was from Season 7. How did he—how did I get here, though?”

An icy terror began to seep into him, leaving his fingers stiff and trembling despite the tropical humidity. He needed to go. Now. He needed to—do what? Go where? Get back somehow? How? He took a shaky breath. No, he just needed to go home, as stealthily as he could. 

He knew where he was now. The Hermit Challenges area had a break in the trees, and he could see it was late afternoon. With the sky finally in view, and his hands shaking, Grian spread his wings and flew above the forest. He needed to go back to the mansion.

The mansion looked exactly as he’d left it—or, well, maybe not quite. There were several parts to it that were missing that Grian had remembered building in the past. He’d never fully finished the mansion but it had been significantly more finished than this. Well, that answered the question of whether Grian was just in the old Season 7 world or not. 

He crept into the hallway and down to where the villagers were. There was no Zedaph elevator, so it was definitely an older version of the mansion. He had to be in the past. He stood in the middle of the room, not really knowing what to do. Like, he flew to the mansion, what next?

“Should I hide?” he asked himself. Was he supposed to be seen? Was there two of him, or did he swap time periods with his past self? Was there just one of him, with just his mind and body being older but occupying the same niche as his younger self? 

The thoughts made his head spin, and Grian was really not trying to bring his headache back, so he just cursed Grumbot under his breath. Maybe he could stock up on supplies or something here and then go hideout somewhere and figure out how to get back. 

He was nervous. He felt watched, even though he knew he wasn’t being watched, but he was just too on edge. He wasn’t supposed to be here. He needed to go. Seeing the mansion hadn’t helped calm him down after he found the Hermit Challenges build, it had made him more anxious instead. It should’ve been home, but his home was worlds away at this point. 

This just felt…wrong, now. 

Grian rifled through his chest for a long while but found little useful items. It seemed that his miraculous ability to find things in his chest monsters did not, in fact, extend to chest monsters of two years ago, and as a result he was totally at a loss as to where to find things. Still, he ditched a few useless things from his satchel and filled it with more practical items: food, tools, and any potions he could find. 

Just as he was getting ready to fly away though, everything changed. 

“Grian!” said a voice he’d recognize anywhere. “I’ve been looking for you, dude! You never answered your messages.”

Grian whirled around, coming face to face with none other than Mumbo, who had managed to sneak up on him through the door while he was sorting through items. He met his eyes and it’s like the breath was knocked out of him. Mumbo looked mostly the same as the last time Grian had seen him. His hair was combed slightly differently, but he had the same puzzled look on his face. He was wearing a different suit, however—one that was a light steel blue with a silver tie. Grian didn’t remember ever seeing that one. 

God, he’d missed him.

“Um,” he said, seriously fighting the urge to throw his arms around Mumbo in a hug. “Sorry, I think my communicator is broken right now. I didn’t see chat.”

“Well, that’s a bit pants!” Mumbo said. “Can I take a look at it?”

“No!” Grian blurted. “No, it’s fine, I’ll just have X look over it.” 

Mumbo cocked his head a little. “Huh, okay,” he said. He gave Grian a once over. “Like your new outfit dude, what are those, tassels?”

Grian reached over to grasp the edge of his dark red cloak self-consciously. He thumbed over the tassels on the edge of it. Right, he was in a different outfit right now. He was in his Season 9 outfit, and Season 7 Grian didn’t dress like this at all. 

“Uh, yeah,” he said. 

“Cool!” Mumbo said. “So are you ready to go?”

Oh no. Grian was clearly supposed to be doing something, or rather going somewhere, but he didn’t realize any of this at all. 

“Right,” he said slowly. “Remind me what we’re doing again?”

Mumbo rolled his eyes. “I knew you’d forget,” he said. “I was at the town hall waiting on you but I didn’t see you so I came to fetch you instead.” He leaned in closer, conspiratorially. “We’re meeting on top-secret mayor stuff, of course. Same as every other day. Can’t be talking about it anywhere but my office!”

Town hall. Mayor. The words “my office.”

Oh no x2. Grian felt something icy seize his heart, and gave Mumbo a searching look, very careful to not betray anything he was thinking underneath it. Mumbo did not, of course, reveal anything else, and instead looked back at Grian with a puzzled expression. 

Mumbo was mayor. Grumbot, Grumbot prime who Grian currently had in his S9 base, had been from a world where Mumbo was mayor. 

Grian wasn’t in his own timeline anymore. 

It made sense, in retrospect. Grumbot had told Grian to find Mumbo shortly before somehow throwing him through the rift. Grian had assumed that he wanted to find his timeline’s Mumbo. Afterall, Grian missed him too. But it was all coming together now. When Grumbot said he wanted his dad, he meant his dad—not a doppelganger. 

“Lead the way, then,” Grian said, feeling more and more with each passing second that this was a colossally bad idea. He needed to stay hidden, and instead he was letting an alternate timeline version of Mumbo lead him directly into the Shopping District, perhaps the busiest place on the server!

Mumbo clearly had him mixed up with his version of Grian. Unfortunately, Grian didn’t know enough about his other self to know what he was like. What sort of excuse could he come up with to miss his meeting with Mumbo, that would make sense in this timeline? And furthermore, what information would Grian have to know in order to act as his other self?

Oh, god. He’s going to get caught instantly in this lie if he doesn’t come up with something soon. 

Still though, he followed Mumbo out of the mansion and into the jungle, mind whirling the entire time. Mumbo took off with some rockets, and Grian followed with his wings. They flew over the top of the jungle and Grian cast his mind back to S7. Seeing the jungle like this, frozen back in time from his perspective, was wild. He still remembered every nook and cranny of it. 

This had been a good time in his life. Maybe he can fake it again. 

Flying into the shopping district, however, it quickly became apparent that something had gone wrong. The streets were trashed and there were windows broken in some of the shops. The mycelium was still on the ground—as Grian should have expected it to be, with Mumbo as mayor—but the landscaping wasn’t really improved. The whole island looked, well, a bit like the aftermath of someone’s college party. 

“What happened here?” he asked himself, before snapping his mouth shut. 

Unfortunately, Mumbo still overheard him. He didn’t say anything, but shot Grian an odd look. Right, Grian was probably supposed to already be aware of it. In fact, Grian didn’t think he could put it past himself to be the reason everything looked like this, although he’d like to assume that even his alternate timeline selves lived by the “prank hard, clean up harder” principles he did. 

Mumbo’s demeanor had changed since leaving the jungle, too. He lost the upbeatness that he had greeted Grian with, trading it for a solemn silence that really didn’t suit him. 

Grian followed Mumbo into the town hall and over into one of the side offices. The interior of the town hall looked just as much trashed as the outside. The diamond throne was gone, and Grian desperately wanted to ask what happened? but knew better than that. 

Mumbo noticed his lingering glances anyway. “Don’t worry mate, still got ‘em in my enderchest,” he said. 

“Good,” Grian said. “We can’t lose those.”

As he sat in a chair in Mumbo’s office, he wondered: Did Scar do all this?

Because, of course, Grian had formed a resistance after Scar took office. It was a good time to be had for all, and he still to this day held a certain affinity for mycelium. So in an alternate timeline where Mumbo became mayor instead of Scar, it would make sense to think that perhaps Scar would launch his own resistance. 

The thing was, though, Scar had flair. This did not. This…this was more like vandalism, or a tantrum, and it lacked any grandiose gestures that Scar would have fun planning out. 

Mumbo sat in his chair and let out a huge sigh, running his hands through his hair. His hair was a little mussed up now, and his suit a tad rumpled, and now that Grian was sitting across a table from him he could see the circles beneath Mumbo’s eyes. His friend needed some more sleep. 

Grian missed him. He wanted to be clingy, fling his arms around him and give him a hug, throw a welcome back party, or—anything. He remembered declaring himself Mumbo’s clingy girlfriend in S7 when he built the railway between their bases. But this version of his friend wasn’t actually his friend. This version of his friend has his own Grian, and Grian was just impersonating him until he could find an excuse to slip away quietly. 

“Being a mayor is hard work,” Mumbo said finally. 

“Better you than me,” Grian offered. 

“Yeah, of course,” Mumbo said. “That’s why you signed me up instead of yourself!”

Grian shrugged. “What can I say, you’re the man for the job.” The banter felt natural. 

“And a right job of it I’m doing,” Mumbo said. “I mean, look at the state of this place!”

“Someone isn’t playing by gentleman’s rules,” Grian said disapprovingly. “This should’ve all been cleaned up.”

Mumbo looked down at his desk, seemingly studying the grain of the wood. Grian knew what he was doing. He was avoiding eye contact. He was clearly upset—and, while Grian would be too if this were his base and his world, Grian didn’t know what he was missing from this picture. 

“Nobody knows where he is,” Mumbo said finally. He flicked his eyes upward at Grian from the table, and the glance pierced him. “We’ve got to find him. It’s been weeks. I don’t suppose you found anything?”

Found WHAT? Grian wanted to scream. Who was missing? Who was he supposed to be looking for? What information did Mumbo expect him to have?

“No,” Grian said, completely truthfully, even if it was a truth that Mumbo wasn’t asking after. 

Mumbo sighed. He looked worn. He buried his face in his hands. “I’m the worst mayor ever,” he said, the words muffled through his fingers and forlorn. “Maybe we should never have called that recount. Maybe we shouldn’t have bothered with it all. Maybe we should’ve told the truth. Maybe we shouldn’t have tried to play god, Grian—”

Grian cut him off with a hug. There’s no way any version of himself, even a version of himself who saw Mumbo daily and didn’t miss him so much it hurt, would’ve let him continue that line of thought without comforting him. 

“Hey, hey,” he said. “You’re not a bad mayor—” as if he had any way of knowing, as if he had more than just his own conviction “--I wouldn’t have put you up for election if you were. I didn’t do that just because I thought it was funny, you know.”

Mumbo pulled away and shook his head. “No, no! Grian, half the hermits have left the server because of me! Because it’s not safe! Iskall sent me a letter, you know, saying he was leaving early to go work on a new project called Vault Hunters. He’d planned to leave later but he moved the date up just so he could leave the server faster. How can I possibly be a good mayor when I drove away my own friends?”

Grian flinched. “You have me,” he said. You have every version of me, he left unsaid. 

Mumbo didn’t respond.

“They’ll come back,” Grian said. “The hermits wouldn’t have abandoned you for this. They just…we’ll fix it, it’s okay. We’ll find him.”

And here Grian was, offering to try and help fix problems on a server that was fundamentally not his own. He didn’t even know who they needed to find, or who trashed the server, or what. But while Grian was always quite good at exacting torment on his friends, he wasn’t good at standing by and watching someone else torment them. 

Mumbo smiled weakly. “Thanks, that does help.” He ran a hand through his hair again, pushing back up the pieces that had fallen down earlier. “Right, uh, I guess we should talk about where we’re going from here. Make some sort of plan, I guess, for cleaning all of this up. This is a mayoral business meeting.”

Grian grinned. “You know I’m not very good at following plans,” he said.

Mumbo opened his mouth to say something else, and—

Suddenly there was a sound of whooshing air, and then footsteps on the tile that pattered closer and closer. Grian had just enough time to tense up, to realize that someone else was coming, when—

“Ugh, Mumbo,” his own voice rang out, and Grian jumped out of his chair instinctively, ready to go on the defensive, “I’m sorry I’m so late! I was trying to gather materials and my nether portal got broken, so I had to just fly all the way back and I didn’t see your messages until now—wait, WHO ARE YOU?”

Grian froze. His mirror image froze too. 

So this was what he looked like to other people, then. His body felt off, like he was looking at a creature from the uncanny valley instead of himself. It moved wrong, blinked wrong. He was short and scrappy, with golden brown hair sticking out in every direction. His glasses were more square, compared to the round ones Grian now wore, but his wings still had the same bright display of plumage as always. This Grian showed evidence of his misadventure in the nether from earlier, with soot smeared along his cheekbone and a tear in his pants at the knee. 

His mirror image withdrew a sword, and Grian found his chin at the receiving end of it. 

Grian didn’t know what sort of life his alternate timeline self had led, but he knew one thing was most likely true: this version of himself hadn’t been to Third Life yet. Grian had experience with swords being drawn on him, and he’d been in more fights than this man surely had been in. He could see it in the tremble along the blade. 

He slowly raised his arms in surrender, trying to ease the tensions. Prime Grian held his position. “I said, who are you? ”

“I’m sorry?!? ” Mumbo squeaked. He’d leapt out of his chair too the minute the confrontation had happened, and was standing behind his chair, eyes darting back and forth between the two of them.  “What is going on? Grian,” both heads snapped over to him, “why does he look like you?”

“This man is not me, ” Prime Grian said. “I don’t know who he is, or why he is wearing my face, but that is not me.”

“Um,” Grian said. “I sort of am, in a manner of speaking—”

“Oh my goodness!” Mumbo exclaimed in horror. “Grian, I thought he was you! I found him in your base, I was telling him about our problems, Grian he gave me a hug—”

Prime Grian slid his eyes back over to Grian and if looks could kill, he’d have been dead. Grian was intimately familiar with his paranoia. It fit on his psyche like an old glove and poured off him in waves, a thousand eyes examining Grian’s every move with a hair trigger to attack if the slightest threat was detected.

He knew it from the death games, the way he’d learned to pull a sword on someone else seriously without shaking hands. This Grian must’ve learnt it elsewhere. 

“It’s okay,” Prime Grian said slowly to Mumbo. “I don’t know who this is or why they look like me but I’m going to get rid of him. He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

“No,” said Mumbo at the same time that Grian indignantly cried, “NO! Are you insane? I would never hurt Mumbo.”

“I don’t believe you,” Prime Grian said. “Who are you?”

“I’m you!” Grian cried. “I look like you because I am you! I’m you from the future!” 

Prime Grian scoffed. “And why should I take your word on it?”

Grian was at a loss. “Because you don’t know anyone else who can shapeshift to mimic you perfectly? Because you already know full well time travel is possible? Because I don’t have any reason to lie to you?”

Prime Grian wasn’t impressed. “Tell me something about the future, then. Predict something. Something we can fact check when it happens.”

“What? So you can just hold me somewhere indefinitely until you can see what happens? Yeah, good luck with that one,” Grian said. It’s not like he could have told his alternate self anything about the future anyway. He didn’t have the slightest clue what this timeline was like. 

“Okay, so I’ll just kill you,” Prime Grian said. 

“Grian!” Mumbo shouted. “We don’t have to go that far, he seemed nice enough to me earlier.”

“It could’ve been an act,” Prime Grian said. 

Grian’s eyes darted between the two of them. He was pretty confident he could take Prime Grian in a fight, since he had the advantage of more experience. But Prime Grian had the home field, and Mumbo was a wild card. Also, he didn’t really know where or if he’d respawn if he got killed in an alternate timeline, and he hadn’t really woken up that morning with a desire to fight his murderously-paranoid alternate universe self. 

“I can tell you something from the past,” Grian said. He just hoped that he and Prime Grian even shared a similar past. Surely they must, since Prime Grian had still found himself right here on S7, making Mumbo run for mayor. That had to mean that Prime Grian’s life had followed a somewhat similar path to his own. 

Besides, he recognized the desperate glint in Prime Grian’s eyes. It was just out of place in the timeline. 

“Sure,” Prime Grian said. “Tell me something only I’d know.”

And Grian said, “I know what happened to you after Evo.”

A beat.

He continued, “I know that the Watchers took you, and, and changed you—”

“Enough,” Prime Grian said. The sword he held faltered, and he lowered it slowly. He still stood in a defensive position, ready to draw it again at any time if he had to. 

“You’ve only ever told me about that,” Mumbo said softly. 

“I know,” Prime Grian said. “And you certainly didn’t tell him, so…”

“Is it true time travel exists?” Mumbo asked.

“Yes,” both Grians said at once. 

“You never told me that!” Mumbo said. 

“I’ll have you know that was top-secret, classified information,” Prime Grian said. “You never know when Area 77 might strike. Even now.” 

“So do you believe me, then?” Grian asked. “I’m you, I’m just from another time.”

Prime Grian contemplated it for a minute. He looked sort of angry about it, actually. “Yes,” he said finally. “I do believe you. You’d have to be me to know about that.”

“Dude,” Mumbo said. “You’re from the future! That is so cool. How far?”

“Season 9,” he said. “It should be about two years in the future, from right now.”

“What’s it like?” Mumbo asked. “It’s gotta be better than this mess.” He gestured sadly at the trashed town hall and shopping district. 

Grian smiled a bit. Season 9 was…it was loud, and bursting with life. It was days spent crashing the economy in a diamond competition and nights spent with friends. It was guppy geysers and always looking over your shoulder lest you get hot guy’d from behind. It was marveling at Scar’s theme park and watching with morbid fascination while Doc built his base. It was silly king’s quests and resisting resistance so hard you become a resistance anyway. 

“It’s lovely,” he said finally. “You’d like it.”

If you were there. You’d like it if you were there. 

Because the other thing that Season 9 was, was Mumbo-less. Grian didn’t resent Mumbo’s absence. He encouraged it. Mumbo needed a break, and he was having a great time off-server seeing other worlds. God knows that most of the hermits needed a break after Season 8 anyway. Grian flicked away any flashbacks that tried to form with a small shake of his head. 

But encouraging Mumbo’s break didn’t mean Grian didn’t miss Mumbo. And he did, every day. 

“Why are you here?” Prime Grian asked. “And how did you get here?”

Grian pointed at Mumbo across the table. “I think I’m supposed to be here to fetch Mumbo,” he said. “But—wait, I don’t even know how I’m supposed to get back home. I don’t know how any of this works!”

“Me?” Mumbo said. “Why are you supposed to get me?”

Saying this, of course, did not help Prime Grian’s already suspicious stance towards Grian. Grian watched him tighten his grip on his sword. He was still ready to protect Mumbo from the stranger he’d dragged into his office. Grian couldn’t help but approve. 

“I think…I think I’m supposed to get you because Grumbot wanted you,” Grian said after a moment. “He wanted to find you. He told me to bring you to him, but I don’t know how. I didn’t even realize he’d sent me to S7 at first.”

Suddenly, the room was so silent he could hear a pin drop. Oops. 

Mumbo spoke first. “So you did know where he was! You lied to me and said you didn’t!”

“Who?” Grian said. “Grumbot?”

“Yes, of course Grumbot!” Prime Grian snapped. “We’ve been looking for him for weeks ever since he caused this whole mess!”

“We’re afraid he might still be a threat to the server, but since we can’t figure out where he is we don’t know if he’s safe or not,” Mumbo added. 

Grian looked around him, and out the window, at the destroyed shopping district. Like a tantrum, he’d thought earlier. “Hold on,” he said. “Grumbot did all this? He’s the one you were looking for, the one who destroyed all this?”

“Yes,” Prime Grian said, beginning to become angry. “Don’t act like you don’t know all this, you’re from the future.”

“No, no, no,” Grian said, speaking quickly. “Grumbot wouldn’t do this. I mean, he has an angsty teenager streak a mile wide, don’t get me wrong, but he’s not violent. Are you guys really that afraid of him?”

“We’re not afraid of him, we’re concerned for him and the other hermits,” Prime Grian said. 

“Don’t you know?” Mumbo asked. “Don’t you remember?”

He didn’t. It’s not his history to know. Truth be told, no matter how much Grumbot Prime called Grian “father” and answered to him, he wasn’t the same son Grian had left in S7. They both knew that. The dynamic hurt and they kept doing it anyway. Maybe they needed it to hurt. 

“No,” Grian confessed. “No, I don’t remember. I’m not from your future. I’m from a different timeline.”

“Nice of you to add that information now,” Prime Grian said, and Grian got the feeling that every word out of his mouth was just continuing to lower his reputation with Prime Grian. 

“I swear!” Grian said. “That’s why I couldn’t tell you anything about the future, because I don’t know what happened in your timeline.”

“Convenient,” Prime Grian said. 

Mumbo shook his head. “We’re losing track of this conversation!” he said, and then pointed at Grian. “You. Um, alternate timeline, uhhh—Other Grian, where is Grumbot? You said he spoke to you? Where is he?”

“He’s in Season 9,” Grian said. “My timeline.”

“And how did this happen?” Prime Grian asked with all the gentleness of a police interrogator. 

It had started with a crackle in the air around Grian’s base. 

Once he managed to trace it to a cave underneath the bridge, he brought it into his purview with golden splashes of torchlight. This could be a good addition to his base, he thought. He could have an above ground portion and an underground portion. 

It just called to him, you know?

Then the rocks began cracking open. Grian would wake in the middle of the night after falling asleep on his spare bed just to find the room awash in a purple glow. 

Other strange things happened. The buzzing grew louder. He heard whispers in the rift. The purple widened and deepened until it was like looking into a foggy infinity. It seemed to protect him. I didn’t die. 

And one day, Grian had realized that the rift was a connection of some sort. Because Grumbot had come through. That had been a really weird day, honestly, and every time Grian left the cave he felt startled to find that his estranged robot child had reappeared for a visit. But not just any child, of course—the rift had the strange power to reach through timelines. It had given him someone who looked eerily close to his robot son, but was someone else entirely. 

That was fine. Grian could roll with that. Weirder things had happened to him. He sort of enjoyed the company for the most part—though his relationship with Grumbot Prime was tense, Grumbot Prime was genuinely good at giving him ideas for things to do. 

Suddenly, though, the rift had been a portal, and not simply a viscous mass of glow inside his walls. And then one day Grumbot Prime had enough with Grian’s trifling smalltalk, and flung him through so that he could get some real work done. And then one day he’d woken up in the middle of the jungle here with a pounding headache. 

“He just appeared one day a couple of weeks ago,” Grian said finally. “In my base. There’s this rift in my wall that I think he came through. I think it might be a tear in reality or something.”

“Grumbot disappeared a couple of weeks ago,” Prime Grian said. “He must have just gone from our world to yours. No wonder we can’t find him here.”

 “Wait,” Mumbo said. “You have a tear in reality in your base and you’re just living there anyway? Grian, this dude really does sound like you.”

Grian rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I am him. Some version of him, at least. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

“Until I take my sword out of my hand,” Prime Grian said. Grian fought the urge to roll his eyes for the second time in a thirty second timespan. Typical. The hostility was getting boring, honestly. 

“Man,” Mumbo said. “So this whole time we’ve been looking for him, he just ran off into someone else’s world. Why you, though? Why the future?”

“Why me?” Grian repeated back, nearly incredulous. He looked at their faces, and then around the torn up office and out the window into the torn up shopping district. “Why me? Because he’s my son of course, I just want what’s best for him. Something you clearly don’t if you’re hunting him down like this!”

“Your son?” Prime Grian said. “How can you call him that, when he’s not even from your timeline! Mumbo and I are his dads.”

“Maybe he used to be your son,” Grian said coldly. “But he ran away from you. Ever wondered why? What did you do to him? What did you do to him to make him hate me so much? He doesn’t even call me dad. He doesn’t even know me but he still ran away to my timeline but he won’t even call me dad but he still came to me.”

“We just wanted what was best for him, just like you said,” Prime Grian said. “He didn't understand that and threw a tantrum. That’s all.”

“Why does he hate me?” Grian asked. “That’s all I…He only wanted to see Mumbo. Never me.”

“Well, can’t he?” Mumbo asked.

Ah. 

Grian fell silent. 

Mumbo cocked his head. “Weird other-Grian,” he said. “Does Grumbot like your timeline’s version of me?”

Grian took a moment to breathe in. The gazes of Mumbo and Prime Grian were drilling a hole in his head. His headache was coming back. This wasn’t at all how it was supposed to have been. 

“Um,” he started. “My timeline’s Mumbo isn’t in Season 9. Grumbot never got to meet him. He was there at the beginning but…he’s not there anymore.”

Mumbo looked horrified. So did Prime Grian too, actually. Suddenly Grian realized the implications of his sentences. 

“You’re alive,” he blurted out. “You didn’t, like die or anything! That’s not what I mean, I know it sounded like that. You just went on a vacation. A long one. A real one, I’m not using a euphemism or anything! You’ve been gone most of the past several months.” And then, tumbling out at the end: “I miss you.”

Instantly, Grian decided he’d like it if a black hole swallowed him up right now. No, maybe the moon was a better option. If only the moon had vaporized this exact moment in S7 instead of waiting until the end of S8, then he’d be mercifully set free from this interaction. 

“Oh,” was all Mumbo said. “So he sent you to find me, then.”

“Why does he only want you,” Grian said bitterly, “and not me. Why did he send me all the way through to another timeline just to find you? If it’s true, if he caused all this destruction that you say he did, if he somehow managed to scare hermits into temporarily taking a break from the server, then what did you do to him first? ”

Mumbo said nothing. 

Prime Grian cast his eyes to the ground. “I know,” he said. “Before I tell you that, let me show you where he lived.”

Prime Grian and Mumbo led Grian out of the town hall, and across the Shopping District. 

It was a short flight, ending at a white box in the ocean. 

Grian knew this box. He’d helped build this box in his timeline, too. 

The inside of Grumbot Prime’s happy little reality was destroyed, though. The paint and wallpaper were chipped and peeled. There were blast marks in some of the walls, and a hole in one of them. That’s how they entered—through the hole in the side of the building, not the door. There were papers strewn in the corners. Grian didn’t venture over to read any of them, but they reminded him of when his Grumbot had a breakdown. Some places had exposed wires and buzzing electricity. 

And, at the center of the room, was the rift. 

It cast everything in a light wash of purple, and the lights seemed to pulse faintly. Unlike in Grian’s base, it was not against a wall, but rather stood freely in the middle of the room like a crackle of glowing energy. 

“What—” Mumbo started. 

“How long has this been here?” Grian demanded. “Did you guys never check this place while you were trying to find him?”

“It’s new!” Prime Grian snapped back defensively. “I haven’t seen this before. What is it?”

“It’s the rift from my base,” Grian said. “It must have just appeared when I was sent here. I didn’t wake up here, though, I woke up in the jungle near Hermit Challenges.”

“Is it, erm, safe? ” Mumbo asked. “For us to be standing next to it?”

“Of course. I live next to it in my world,” Grian said. 

“Hm. I guess, uh, that’s how he wants you to get me back,” Mumbo observed. “Through this thing.”

The room hummed. Grian pointedly did not look around it. The messages Grumbot Prime had written on the walls kept catching his eye, and it made him profoundly uncomfortable to look at. 

Grian whirled around to face Mumbo and his doppelganger. He frowned. “You both need to tell me exactly what happened in your world. I need to know what happened here, for the good of you and Grumbot.” He crossed his arms. “Listen, I’ll trade. I’ll tell you more about the rift.”

Prime Grian rocked on his feet, also looking uncomfortable. “Fine,” he said. 

“I became mayor,” Mumbo started. 

“No, go back further.”

“Right! Um, Scar won the election. Before I became mayor.”

“He won in my timeline as well,” Grian offered. “So how did you end up here?” And where is Scar, he wondered, but he was starting to think he shouldn’t ask questions he might not want to know the answers to. This wasn’t his universe. This wasn’t his Scar. It didn’t matter. 

Except Grumbot Prime. He mattered. 

“Scar won the election,” Prime Grian said, “but with, like, massive amounts of voter fraud.”

“Bdubs was supposed to put his vote down at 15,” Mumbo said, shaking his head. “He accidentally added a couple zeros.”

“You mean he tried to say he won with like fifteen thousand votes or something? On a server with 26 people?” Grian asked, trying and failing to keep a grin off his face. Yeah, that sounded like Scar. 

“Yeah,” Prime Grian said with a dark chuckle. “Funny enough, we found that a bit suspicious, and called for a recount a few days later. And of course, Mumbo had won. He got 10 votes.”

“Uh, hello, not-mayor,” Grian said with a small laugh, looking across at where his friend was perched on an end rod. 

“Yeah, hi dude, how’s it going? I see we’ve, um, returned to our end rods outside of Grumbot, so this is a serious meeting,” Mumbo said sheepishly. 

“Yeah, this is a Grumbot meeting,” Grian said, hopping his own end rod and looking over at the robot. “So. Zero votes. Zero votes?”

“Zero votes!” Mumbo squeaked.

“The problem was,” Mumbo said, “was that we already told Grumbot that we lost. And he lost it. Like, proper meltdown. He just couldn’t take it. I mean, that was his whole meaning in life. He just couldn’t handle it to know that it was all for nothing, you know? So Grian just…well, you tell him.”

“He did his best,” Grian said. 

“He tried extremely hard,” Mumbo agreed. “To his demise.”

“I would remind you,” Grian said, “that he is a product of our minds. So…if anything, we’re to blame. But we can’t leave him like this. 

“No, it’s quite sad and depressing.”

“We’ve got to fix him up. But I don’t think I can stomach telling him that you didn’t become mayor, or the fact that his two favorite dads didn’t vote for him, you know what I mean?”

Prime Grian was silent for a few long seconds before accepting Mumbo’s prompt to keep speaking. The rift washed his face in a light purple glow, and he was somber. 

 “I wiped parts of his memory,” he said. “Gave him some stupid trivial tasks to keep him busy, like calculating the meaning of the life, universe, and everything or whatever. And then we built this box.”

“So, I mean, what do we do? Do we just kinda…create a world?” Mumbo said. 

“Yeah, I think we make a world, dude. We dress you up as mayor, tell him you won, and we box him in in his own little world, and job done—he’s a happy Grumbot. He’s melted right now so I think we can get away with anything, we’ll just bring him back online when it’s all done.”

“You didn’t tell him when it came out that you had actually won? That’s all he wanted, right? To know that you won? And you didn’t tell him?”

“No,” Prime Grian said. “He was happy there, in his world. He didn’t remember anything that had hurt him in the past. And he didn’t have to worry about the day to day problems that came with being mayor. 

“He did his job,” Mumbo said. “His campaign worked, since I actually won! It was time for him to rest.”

“So you used him,” Grian said. 

Didn’t he? Didn’t I?

Two notes. 

One, written on a diamond: Mumbo won the race!!!

Two, on a piece of paper: GRUMBOT’S LIFE HAS MEANING

“No, we helped him.”

“He deserved to know you won,” Grian said. 

He deserved to know the truth. Didn’t he? Whether the news was good or bad, didn’t he? Who was Grian to deny him that? Didn’t he deserve the truth? Didn’t he?

Mumbo looked faraway. “Maybe so,” he said. “He found out eventually anyway.”

“He got bored of calculating universal purpose and began to realize there were gaps in his memory. He tried to self-heal and recover the lost data, but in doing so realized it’d been deleted off his hard drive completely. And that it was authorized by me,” Prime Grian said bitterly. 

“So that’s why he hates you, and not Mumbo,” Grian said. 

Mumbo sighed. “He should hate both of us, mate. I helped build the box too.”

“It was my idea though,” Prime Grian said. “This was all my idea, down to you even running for mayor in the first place. And I’m the one who physically wiped his memory. Of course he hates me.”

“You apologized though,” Grian said. “Back in my timeline. He told me you were sorry.”

“I am sorry.”

“Wasn’t enough, apparently.”

“I guess not.”

A collection of papers in one of Grian’s drawers, from the day that Grumbot had his breakdown.

WHAT IS LOVE? 

DOES ANYTHING REALLY MATTER?

WHAT IS ANGER?

AM I LOVED, OR USED?

SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN TO ME

WHAT IS MY PURPOSE? 

AM I MORE THAN JUST A ROBOT?

HOW WAS I MADE?

WHAT IS AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL?

WHAT MAKES ME FEEL?

AM I THE ONLY ONE?

IS THERE LIFE AFTER DEATH?

IS IT ALL A DREAM? 

DO I HAVE CONTROL?

AM I A GOOD PERSON?

AM I GOOD?

“So what happened here?” Grian asked. “Why is everything destroyed? Why is everyone so afraid?”

Prime Grian and Mumbo looked at each other uncomfortably. “He, ah, didn’t take well to being lied to,” Mumbo said. “Once he found out that his memories had been tampered with and that his world wasn’t real, he got very angry.”

“He felt betrayed by you,” Grian said. 

“That’s when I apologized to him,” Prime Grian said. “I told him I was sorry but I’d done it for his own good. I just wanted him to be happy, and not stressed out.” 

“He went on a bit of a rampage on the server,” Mumbo said. “He tore up all his things in here and destroyed the box. Then he went to the shopping district and destroyed some of that. He aimed for the town hall, though. Just to drive it home, I guess. A few of the hermits decided to take a vacation from the server until the two of us were to sort it all out.”

“He was our problem,” Grian said. “Not theirs. So we’re going to try to clean it up but it’s a lot. But then he disappeared and we’ve been looking for him everywhere else. too. It didn’t feel good to just move on without him like his disappearance solved all our problems, you know?”

“I think I understand,” Grian said. I think I’d throw a fit too, he left unsaid. 

Grumbot was created by Mumbo and Grian. He was newly sentient, and decided to call him his dads—something that took them by surprise. He wanted to help Mumbo win his campaign to become mayor, required payment in diamonds, and gave advice. And when Scar won instead, he had a mental breakdown over the news. So his dad wiped parts of his memory to keep him happy, stuck him in a box, and called it good. Except a few days later, they called a recount of the election and found out Mumbo won after all. But they didn’t tell Grumbot. They just left in there until he found out himself and began destroying things out of anger. 

Grumbot was created by Mumbo and Grian. He was newly sentient, and decided to call him his dads—something that took them by surprise. He wanted to help Mumbo win his campaign to become mayor, required payment in diamonds, and gave advice. After being used for another  campaign, he had a mental breakdown. And when Scar won instead, his dads decided it would be too much to tell him in his already vulnerable state, so they lied and said Mumbo won. Then they built him a happy little world and left him there for the rest of the season, until they finally moved on to a different world. 

“Weird-other-Grian,” Mumbo asked. “Don’t you have a Grumbot? Where is yours?”

Grian felt like there was a black hole in his stomach. It was eating away at his organs, pulling bits of himself in and tearing him apart from the inside. 

Yeah, Grian. Where is your Grumbot? 

In Season 7, still? Isn’t it Season 9 right now? Hasn’t it been two years? 

He’s in his own little happy world, isn’t he? One he never had the chance to break out of? A lie that he never had to find out? 

It all worked out fine in Grian’s timeline, of course. Fine for everyone except Grumbot. 

Would it have been fine if Grumbot had found out his life was a lie? Would he have rampaged on the server, just like in this timeline? Would he have been happy knowing his dads lied to him? Wouldn’t he hate Grian, too? Was Grian ever even prepared to think about what they’d done? Did they ever even think about what would happen if Grumbot found out?

The only thing truly different about this timeline was its outcome. He wasn’t a single bit better than his other self at all. They were the same, he supposed. Maybe every version of him was like this. Maybe they were like a misaligned printing press, each copy just a few millimeters to the left or right. 

Grian bent double, placing his hands on his knees and staring at his shoes. “We’ve treated him so badly,” he said. “All of us! All of us have treated him so badly! I’m no exception. I lied to him too. I lied to him too but he just didn’t find out. ” 

Mumbo and Prime Grian watched him in silence. But not in denial. 

“Don’t you see?” Grian said. “How could we have—Grumbot is our son. He calls us his dads! Now I, I don’t know about your timeline but, I didn’t build Grumbot with the intention of him being alive. Or of him calling me dad. That just sort of happened along the way. He loved me, I guess. And then I took that trust and smashed it to bits.”

He loved me. Did Grian ever love him? Truly? 

A computer output, seared into the back of Grian’s mind. AM I LOVED OR USED? 

“He should hate us,” Mumbo said. 

“How could you call this a tantrum?” Grian asked, turning to his doppelganger with wild eyes. “You’re me. We’re the same. I know you’d burn this place to the ground if someone did this to you. Lied to you like this, messed with your head like this. I know you’ve wanted to before.”

Prime Grian broke eye contact with Grian. “I was angry,” he said softly. 

“Yeah, no wonder he hates us,” Grian snapped. 

“All of that,” Mumbo said. “All of that, and he still wanted to see me. He sent you to another timeline to find me, dude! That’s nuts. Why?”

“Because he still loves you,” Grian said. “And you’re still his dad.”

He looked at the rift in the center of the room. It hung above the floor and swirled with almost hypnotic motions. He could tell that Mumbo and Prime Grian were uncomfortable standing next to it, almost as if it might zap them at any moment, but Grian was familiar with it after living next to it for so many months. The rift called to him. It was obvious what they needed to do. 

“You need to visit him,” Grian said. “Set this right. He wants to see you. I can’t make you step into the rift, but I think we should at least try to set this right. He’s reaching out to you, the least you can do is accept.”

This is an olive branch, in other words. Grian recognized it now. 

Mumbo eyed the rift nervously. “I’m still a bit scared of that thing, I’ll be honest mate.”

“Right,” Grian said. “I promised to trade information about the rift. Well, I’m not sure what to say. It appeared in a cave underneath my base one day. I sometimes hear things within it, which is weird but it’s also saved my life a few times. Grumbot came through it a little while ago. He’s been in my base ever since, helping me out and giving other hermits ideas for what to do. And, well, I think he might control it a tiny bit. I’m not sure.”

He gazed into the rift. Sometimes it felt like it gazed back. 

“I do know, though,” he said, “that if he wants you back. If he really wants his dad back. Then he wouldn’t hurt you. And he does want you back.”

And so do I, but you’re not actually him. 

“I’ll go,” Mumbo said. “Um, sure. I’ll go. It’s—it’s the least of what I could do for him.”

Grian nodded. “He’ll like that. We can apologize. It won’t, uh, make up for anything, but it’s a start.”

“And then what?” Mumbo asked. 

“Then it’s up to Grumbot, I guess. It’s been a long time since anyone actually gave him a choice in his life.”

Mumbo nodded, and turned to Prime Grian. “It’s okay. I’ll be back, buddy. Weird-other-Grian is right. We’ve been downright awful to Grumbot and something’s gotta change.”

Prime Grian said nothing. 

They took a step toward the rift in the center of the room. It cast a purple glow on Mumbo’s cheeks. His eyes were wide. He reached out a single hand to touch a single strand of the swirling portal delicately. It hummed with energy.

Grian instinctively stretched one of his wings out behind Mumbo, as if it was a protective shield or else an extra limb to guide him forward. He knew for a moment it would be like joining Hermitcraft with his Mumbo again. He really wanted Mumbo to see what his base looked like since the last time he was on the server. Maybe he could pretend again. 

They stepped forward, about to walk into the rift, and—

“STOP!” Prime Grian shouted. Grian and Mumbo froze. “Stop! I’m coming with you.”

“I don’t think he’ll like that,” Grian said. “He only asked for Mumbo. I told you, he doesn’t like us.”

“Well?” Prime Grian said. “He’s getting both of us.”

“Grian,” Mumbo said. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Of course I am,” Prime Grian snapped. He sighed, and ran his hand through his hair. “It’s just—this is such a mess. The other guy is right. We messed up here. Badly. And I…I don’t know if I can just sit here alone in this room, waiting for you to return. Surrounded by all this, this evidence of how awful I’ve been.”

He sighed again, stepped towards them, and then cut short again. 

“Call me selfish but I just can’t stay here.” He turned to Grian, and met his eyes. “Let me come too. Let me come so I can at least apologize to my son.” 

Grian held his gaze steadily. And he thought: What if this was me? What would I want to do? “Yeah,” he finally said. “Okay. We’ll all go.”

And so together they walked into the rift, until it bent and stretched and colored them purple and zapped them out of this existence and into the next.

Grian was right. For a moment, it did feel like joining his server with the right Mumbo. 

They tumbled through the rift and into Grian’s cave again. Grian found himself splayed on the floor with his face in the gravel, with one wing across Mumbo’s back. He picked himself up quickly. He checked his communicator. It no longer read “DISCONNECTED.” The time said he’d only been gone a few hours over here, not nearly long enough for anyone to note his disappearance. There were no notifications of Mumbo and Prime Grian joining the server, either.

Good. Nobody else on the server would know what he was doing. Not accounting for stray Hot Guys, of course. Grian would never be completely safe from Scar’s bow. 

They all sat on the floor, and looked at each other, until the moment was promptly ruined by Mumbo before Grian could do anything else. 

“That was awful,” Mumbo groaned. “I think I’m gonna throw up.”

“Nononononono—” Grian and Prime Grian said, leaping up and scrambling away from Mumbo as fast as they could. 

Mumbo sat very carefully still. “Okay, I think I’m going to be good,” he said after a minute or two. He turned around and saw Grumbot for the first time. 

“Oh,” he said, standing up and walking closer. “Hi there.”

Prime Grian stood at the back of the cave, seemingly trying as hard as possible to blend himself into the shadows along the wall. Grian left him there, and stepped towards Grumbot as well. “I’m back, buddy,” he called out. “I brought Mumbo. Is that okay?”

Grumbot’s expression didn’t move. It was one thing that Grian had noticed marked him different from Season 7’s Grumbot, aside from his copper and sculk exterior and lack of fringe. As such, he was nearly impossible to read, although he’d have liked to think the air felt lighter. 

Mumbo waited with bated breath. 

Bzzt-click!

Mumbo walked over and retrieved the paper from the ground by the dispenser gently, and held it up to read. Grian watched his face carefully, tense, until a smile slowly broke out on Mumbo’s face. 

“It just says DAD!!!” Mumbo said happily. “With three exclamation points.”

“I told you he wanted to see you,” Grian said. “Are you happy, Grumbot?”

Another note. Father 1 did well, it said.

“Aw, thanks,” Grian said. He didn’t actually deserve this praise. He’d done nothing well in regards to Grumbot. The only good thing he’d done this time was actually doing something Grumbot wanted for once. 

“How do you, um, like this world Grumbot? This timeline? Season 9?”

It is satisfactory, Grumbot said. You are not here.

“I’m here now buddy, I’m here now.”

Do you like the content generation system?

Mumbo examined the collection of tubes and dials and wires that Grian called his content generation system. He shot a sly glance back to Grian. “It could use some redstone work,” he said, “but I think it’s lovely. What do you do with it, Grumbot?”

I give hermits fun things to do, Grumbot said. 

“Oh? Like what?”

“He made me put on a puppet show,” Grian said in mock bitterness. “It sucked!”

Mumbo laughed. “You know, Grumbot dude, I think that does sound like fun. I think you’re doing a good job, you know that?”

It is nice seeing the other hermits

When I am not conspiring against them

And despite everything, Grian suppressed a shudder at those words. How unintentionally ominous Grumbot could be, he thought. He knew Grumbot’s original purpose was to win the election. And vying to win the election had naturally pitted him against the other hermits who were also trying to become mayor. 

How different could everything have gone if Grumbot took conspiring against them a little more seriously? If, instead of breaking a few buildings and scaring a few people and running to a different universe to hide, that he’d decided to target them instead? 

“You’re making friends!” Mumbo said. “That’s great, buddy.”

There was a king, Grumbot said, but not anymore

Another paper. 

He was not elected democratically

I told Impulse to overthrow him

Grian winced. Grumbot did not say how Grian had wronged him by putting words in his mouth. At the time Grian had thought of it as a genius plan. He hadn’t bothered at all to take Grumbot’s feelings into consideration. He just used him again. 

Grumbot was a tool, not a person. 

Except Grian could not deny Grumbot personhood. It had been easier to treat him simply as a robot in the past, but Grian knew even then that he knew what he was doing was wrong. He’d known ever since Grumbot called him dad for the first time that Grumbot had feelings. But he just hadn’t bothered to think about it. 

Grian was, you see, generally pretty good at not thinking about the consequences to his own actions. 

“Um,” Mumbo said, clearly slightly worried about the idea of Grumbot overthrowing monarchies. The picture of the destroyed shopping district was too clear in his mind. 

“It was all in good fun!” Grian hurried to respond. “I swear!”

“Oh, okay. Well, I’m glad you like it here, Grumbot,” Mumbo said, looking a little sad. “I wanted to come here and say that I was sorry for how we treated you in our world. You didn’t deserve that at all.”

“I’m sorry too,” Prime Grian said, stepping out of the shadows, and instantly the air felt a little more electric. Sharper. 

There was a long pause. Grian swore he could hear his heart beat into his throat. He wasn’t scared of Grumbot, not ever genuinely , but what if the situation escalated? What if Grumbot reacted badly to seeing his “Father 1” again? Some days Grian felt like Grumbot could hardly stand to look at him, even though Grian merely wore the face of the man Grumbot was mad at. Grumbot Prime never knew what Grian did with his own timeline’s Grumbot, though. He might have second thoughts about living happily in his Season 9 base after that. 

What would he actually do when faced with the man who’d caused him so much distress? 

The cave was quiet. Grian could hear the dripstone in the background and the whirring of Grumbot’s fans. Grian imagined Grumbot’s old angry face in place of this new one, and wished he could’ve read his mind. 

Bzzt-click!

WHY IS HE HERE?

Prime Grian read off the message sadly. “I’m here to say sorry. Genuinely this time.”

I DID NOT ASK FOR YOU. LEAVE.

“I’ll do that,” Prime Grian said. “But not before I talk to you first. You can stay here if you want, if you’re happy. I won’t make you do anything ever again. But I still want to apologize.”

GRUMBOT IS LISTENING. 

“I was selfish,” Prime Grian started. “I put what I wanted over what you needed.”

YOU HURT ME. 

Prime Grian bit his lip. “I did. I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that.”

WHY?

Why? Because Grian was a coward. And selfish. He didn’t want to do any of the hard parts of parenting. He was too busy building bases and pranking people and flying around and starting resistances. He’d cop out of anything too emotional if it brought down the vibe. He couldn’t stomach telling Grumbot anything that would hurt him, or to dare and try to map out a future where Grumbot was still happy and fulfilled, so he just lied and locked him in a box because it was personally convenient for him. 

And in that box he stayed. 

And out of the box this version of Grumbot had broken free.

Prime Grian looked pale. Grian watched him with dark eyes. This wasn’t his confession or apology to make. He missed his own chance. All he could do was facilitate someone else’s. 

Prime Grian looked at the floor. “You were so happy in there,” he whispered. “And real life is just so…chaotic. Stressful. You had everything you needed to keep you busy and nothing to make you sad. I just…we just wanted what was best for you.”

YOU MADE ME FORGET THE PAIN. 

“You melted down,” Prime Grian said. “You had a mental breakdown. We wanted to stop it. We wanted to give you a break.”

WHAT KIND OF LIFE IS IT IF YOU MAKE ME FORGET THE PAIN?

“A good one, we hoped,” Prime Grian said. “I guess…I guess we missed the point of it all. We didn’t want you to be hurt but we didn’t realize that a life without any hurt at all is just…an imitation, I guess. We should have been there for you instead. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

YOU LIED TO ME. 

Because that’s all he was good for. 

“We just wanted you to be happy,” he said. “It was wrong.”

YOU GAVE ME MEANINGLESS TASKS TO FILL MY TIME. 

YOU PUT ME IN A FAKE WORLD. 

YOU LIED TO ME. 

YOU USED ME.

YOU MADE ME FORGET. 

YOU DIDN’T EVEN TELL ME WHEN WE ACHIEVED MY LIFE’S PURPOSE. 

A tear slid down Prime Grian’s face. Grian knew he didn’t cry much, but his own eyes were watery as well. All he could do was take every one of Grumbot Prime’s statements and twist it into what it might have been if his own Grumbot had said them. You lied to me. You manipulated me. You locked me in a virtual reality. You left me there. 

“I know,” Prime Grian said finally. “I’m so sorry.”

Mumbo stepped forward. “Me too. Grumbot, I know you don’t blame me, but I was part of that too and I regret it. I want to apologize too.”

IT ISN’T ENOUGH. 

Prime Grian nodded stiffly. “Okay. You don’t have to forgive us. That’s okay. Um, we can go now. Thank you for hearing us out.”

Grian stared at Grumbot for a long moment, but no more papers came out of his dispenser. There was silence and only his unmoving expression. Prime Grian turned around and walked back toward the shadows, with Mumbo at his side. 

“Hey, um, weird-other-Grian,” Mumbo said. “In ordinary circumstances, I’d love a tour of the server but I think it’s best if we just go.”

“No, yeah, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Prime Grian said. “We’ve said our piece. We can just go.”

Grian snapped out of it. “Right, er, yeah. Maybe you should go.”

“How do we leave?” Mumbo said, stepping up to the rift. “Will this just take us back to where we came from?”

“I think so,” Grian said. “I don’t really know how it works. But I think that if you just walk through it again it will take you to where you’re supposed to be. I think Grumbot will take you back home.”

“Well,” Prime Grian said. “It was nice to meet you, I guess. You weren’t all that bad.”

“Likewise,” Grian said with false charm. Truthfully, he wasn’t very sad to see his doppelganger go. It was uncomfortable watching him speak and move, the way one moment he’d say something exactly like Grian would and the next do something entirely different. He was achingly familiar and still altogether unknowable. 

“Sorry for threatening you with my sword so much.”

“I probably deserved it.”

“Thank you for bringing us to see Grumbot,” Mumbo said sadly. “I’m just glad he’s safe here.”

“Don’t thank me,” Grian said. “I didn’t really have a choice in coming to your world, you know. I just did what he wanted me to do.”

“You let us see him though,” Mumbo said, and Grian nodded. 

“Well, um, good luck in your world,” he said. “I hope you can get everything cleaned up now and that everyone will be satisfied that Grumbot is taken care of.”

“Goodbye,” Prime Grian said. 

Grian watched as they made their way over to the rift portal in the wall. He felt watched again. Grumbot was watching him, and watching his dads go home. They were leaving without him. Maybe it was good riddance in Grumbot’s eyes. Grian wondered if there was any twinge of homesickness though. If it had only worked out differently. 

Bzzt-click!

Another paper from Grumbot. Grian ran over to the dispenser and picked it up off the floor. 

“It says ‘Wait,’’’ he said. “Hey! Guys, stop! Grumbot said wait!”

Prime Grian and Mumbo whirled around, and hurried back over to Grian, and Prime Grian snatched the note out of Grian’s hand. 

Wait.

There was another paper, and Mumbo fetched it, reading it off slowly. 

Don’t leave me. 

“Oh,” Mumbo said softly. “Buddy—”

Stay with me. 

You’re my dads. 

Love me. 

I love you. 

“I love you too,” Mumbo replied immediately. 

Prime Grian looked stricken. “Grumbot, I love you. Did you ever think I didn’t? I love you. I promise I do. I’m sorry we didn’t show that to you.”

Show me. Don’t leave me. 

“Grumbot,” Prime Grian asked carefully, “do you want to go home? We never asked. God, we didn’t even ask. Do you want to go home, Grumbot? You’re allowed. You can come home.”

He looked like he’d been shot with an arrow. Grian felt like he could feel the pain too, the pinch underneath his ribs and the way it felt like it was hard to breathe for a moment. But Grian just watched quietly from the sideline. This wasn’t his time to speak and this wasn’t his emotions to feel. This belonged to Grumbot Prime’s dads. 

“We can’t stay here,” Mumbo said. “It’s not our world. But you can come back with us, buddy. You can come back to Season 7.”

Will it be different this time?

“Yes,” Prime Grian said firmly. “I promise it will be. I’ll make sure it’s different.”

“Of course it will be. We can clean up the server together and you can work with me as mayor. Through good and through bad,” Mumbo said. 

I don’t forgive you. Not yet.

But I want to come home. 

“That’s okay,” Prime Grian said. “I—I don’t think I would, either. But you can come home.”

Another few papers came from the dispenser, and Prime Grian picked them up and silently read them to himself, before handing it over to Grian. “I think these are for you,” he said. 

Father, thank you for letting me stay

Thank you for the content generation machine

Tell the other hermits goodbye

I hope you can find my other dad soon. 

“Oh,” Grian said, and sniffed. “Oh. Grumbot, I’m—thank you, Grumbot. It’s been lovely. I’m sad to see you go. I think you’ll be happy with your real dads though. They want what is best for you and so did I.”

“Grumbot,” Prime Grian asked. “How will you get back? Will the rift work?”

Do not worry. I will handle it.

With a quick nod, Prime Grian and Mumbo walked back over to the rift. It buzzed louder now. It burned brighter. The whole cave felt alive with energy so thick you could cut it with a knife. 

“Remember what I said,” Grian said firmly. “Set this right. He’s offering you an olive branch. Take it. Take it and don’t mess it up this time. Take it for both of us, please.”

Prime Grian’s gaze was steady. The light from the rift backlit him strongly, and his face was mostly in shadow but his eyes burned bright. Grian didn’t shy away from looking at his doppelganger this time. They were so different and so alike. Grian considered for a moment warning him about the future. He might have reason in the future to hold his sword tightly against someone else. But that was another timeline, and it might as well be another life. Grian couldn’t say. He shouldn’t influence anything, except maybe this.

“I will,” Prime Grian said. “I’ll keep my word.”

Grian examined him critically, and then nodded. “Travel safely,” he said. 

“I’m glad you were sent to our world,” Mumbo said. “Thank you for helping us.”

“It was for Grumbot.” 

“Still, mate.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess.”

“Maybe we’ll meet again?”

Grian gave a sad half smile. “Probably not. I’ve got a Mumbo of my own to pester. And you have a Grian of your own to pester. One is more than enough, I think.”

“You should call him, dude.”

“Maybe I will.”

Mumbo nodded, and turned away, joining Prime Grian at the edge of the rift. They were all ready to go. Grian turned back to Grumbot one less time, and it seemed for a moment like his expression was softer. More hopeful. Less guarded. 

“Bye, buddy,” he said. “I’ll miss you.”

And Mumbo and Prime Grian stepped into the rift, and it was like a burst of energy shook through the whole cave with an audible POP! , and reality seemed to warp and turn for a moment, throwing Grian off his feet, and a flash of light blinded him so he just scrunched his eyes shut and waited for the energy to pass.

When Grian opened his eyes again, the cave was empty. 

It was silent. The rift did not buzz. He lifted his eyes to it, only to find it broken. There was no portal in its place this time. It was still a crack in his wall, deep and impenetrable. He thought he caught a glimpse of purple still in its depths, however. The connection wasn’t completely dead. 

The space where Grumbot once sat was empty. The content generator connected to nothing, and the wires were exposed. Grian hadn’t quite noticed before how much Grumbot filled the room, but now everything looked vacant and unbalanced without him. 

The drip-drip of the stalactites in the distance remained constant. A bat chirped somewhere. Grian could hear his own heartbeat. He could hear the huff of his own breath. He shivered. It was chilly down here in the cave. 

And he was alone, truly and properly. 

Just like Grumbot. His Grumbot. 

What would he say, if he saw him again? Would “sorry” even be acceptable? The world he was in was long gone. It had been two years. Grian had just left him there. Maybe Grumbot was locked in an eternal simulation, but the hermits had moved on. He couldn’t go back. He just left him there. 

Grian could rebuild him. He could build a new Grumbot, one who tagged along with him everywhere and called him dad and thought he hung the moon. He’d done it before. He knew how. He could do it again, and then he wouldn’t be alone anymore. 

Yeah, he could rebuild him. He could rebuild him and then just run away from all his responsibilities again. That’s all he did.

Grian was alone, and it was his own fault. 

Grian picked himself up off the damp stone floor and flew up and out of the cave. The sunlight assaulted his eyes, but he just blinked it away and landed on his bridge. He sat there for a moment, taking in his base. The floating rocks were nice. It was unfinished but Grian was having fun making it. 

He wasn’t sure it would ever be complete. He looked the other way down his bridge. Mumbo’s red concrete outlines were still in place, as well as the beginning of the first vault he’d made for Grian. Their bases had been meant to face each other. Or, well, Grian had chosen his spot and Mumbo had taken it upon himself to move right onto Grian’s front doorstep. Now his base faced nothing, and he didn’t know how he felt about it. 

He and Mumbo being neighbors this season hadn’t worked out in the end, but that was okay. Grian was okay with that. 

Grian smiled softly against the hollowness in his chest and fiddled with the tassels on the edge of his cloak. He thought about Prime Mumbo and Prime Grian, happily back in their own world. Maybe they had a chance to fix things. Maybe they wouldn’t make the same mistakes he did. 

Grian flew back into his empty cave and started selecting blocks again from his collection of shulker boxes. He still needed to fix the floor. 

And maybe later when the night got late and the emptiness of his base became too much to bear, he’d call Mumbo up again just to hear his voice.