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“Hey Phineas, whatcha doin’?” Isabella asked, leaning forward to inspect the pile of odds, ends, hammers, hacksaws, plywood, and engine parts set up in the middle of the boys’ backyard.
“Oh, hey Isabella!” Phineas said. “Nothing much. I found a pamphlet on the three least visited countries in Europe and they sounded interesting. Especially because I found the pamphlet hidden into the middle of an antique bronzed lamp that our dad was cleaning to sell. He found the lamp in a locked crate which had been left in an abandoned storage locker until the antiques people decided to go Storage Wars on it.”
Isabella stared dreamily at Phineas as he talked, losing herself in his excited eyes. “That’s interesting.”
“Yeah, right? Ferb and I read the pamphlet and we’d never heard of the countries inside. So we decided we knew what we were going to do today.”
“What
are
you going to do today?”
“Well, visit them, of course!” Phineas declared. As he spoke, Ferb busily assembled the framework of a locomotive and attached the engine to a newly-constructed railroad passenger car. Behind Ferb, Baljeet hammered away at a set of train tracks leading to a mysterious, shimmering blue portal. Behind Baljeet, Buford pantomimed kicking Baljeet.
Phineas continued on, oblivious to the unfolding chaos. “Ferb and I set up an intercontinental portal earlier this morning, using specific frequency waves and GPS coordinates to make sure the other end of the portal will put us down in the first country we want to visit: Svitz. Now Ferb, Baljeet, Buford, and I are creating the train, train tracks, and a device that auto-lays continuous tracks ahead of the locomotive as we move forward. Of course, we’re going to have to figure out some sort of way to destroy the tracks after we’re done with them. We don’t want to litter.” Phineas frowned, and rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
“I can help with that!” Isabella said. “The Fireside girls and I created a litter-destroying ray just yesterday. We were using it to destroy all the havoc left at the park after the Annual Doofenshmirtz family reunion. That whole family leaves so much waste out every year!”
“Never heard of them,” Phineas said.
“You haven’t heard of our mayor?”
“I guess I’m a little young to be interested in politics.”
Isabella decided not to point out that as a socially aware girl, she’d already realized everyone was involved in politics whether they liked it or not. They could talk about it later. Phineas’s heart was in the right place, after all. “Haven’t you noticed the giant sign on the skyscraper downtown? Doofenshmirtz Evil Inc.?”
“Oh,” Phineas said. “I guess. That is a weird name for a building, now that you point that out. Do you think the word ‘evil’ is an abbreviation for something less, I don’t know,
evil
?”
Isabella shrugged.
“It probably is,” Phineas dismissed. “Otherwise, I’m sure the city wouldn’t let it stay up. After all, who wants to let evil people set up headquarters in their city? They’d have to be constantly monitored to make sure they don’t blow anything up!”
At that moment, the teal, semi-aquatic, egg-laying species of mammal who had been sleeping under the tree opened his eyes, suddenly waking from a nap.
“Morning, Perry,” Phineas said.
Perry the Platypus chattered his teeth then nonchalantly ducked behind the trunk of the tree. He didn’t emerge from the other side.
“Weird,” Isabella observed.
“Totally,” Phineas agreed. “Anyway, that’s fantastic news about your litter destroying gun! Do you want to join our trip to Europe?”
“I’m in!”
“How about the rest of the Fireside girls? Do you think they want to come too?”
Isabella thought about it. The whole troop had been texting earlier that morning and it seemed most of them were exhausted from their massive clean up at the Tri-State Area Park the day before. But they all did like a good Phineas and Ferb adventure…
But also Isabella had been wanting to spend a bit more time one-on-one with Phineas. Even if Ferb, Baljeet, and Buford were also there.
“Nope!” she said. “They’re all sleeping in today.”
A high, nasally scream emerged from the house. “Phineas! Ferb! WHAT are you DOING?” Candace glared at the group from the window. Her friend Stacy peered out at them too.
“Candace!” Phineas said, with just as much excitement but 100% less annoyed anger. “Come see our cool self-continuing train tracks.”
Candace disappeared from the window. Seconds later she came stomping out of the house, Stacy in tow. “I am totally going to bust you both!”
Phineas beamed at the finished train. “Have you ever heard of the countries of Svitz, Franchia, and Luftnarp?”
“What are those?” Stacy asked.
“European countries that no one visits!”
“Oh cool,” Stacy said. “I’ve always wanted to visit a country that no one else visits. Except a lot of the countries like that are dictatorial and authoritarian to the extreme, obviously, and I’m not pro-authoritarian regimes so I haven’t been able to visit one yet. Can we come?”
“Stacy!” Candace screeched.
“Come on, Candace, it will be totally fun.” Stacy patted Candace’s shoulder reassuringly.
Candace considered the offer. Her expression contorted. She raised a finger in objection. Then, her shoulders slumped and she seemed to deflate. “I have been feeling bummed ever since Jeremy had to go out of town for the week.”
“Come on, sis. A little vacation is exactly what you need to lift your spirits!”
“Fine.” Candace crossed her arms.
Isabella silently amended her list. She would be glad to have one-on-one time with Phineas even if it included Ferb, Baljeet, Buford, Candace, and Stacy.
Candace added, “But I’m totally telling mom when we get back.”
“Oooh, yeah, we should take some pictures for her! Ferb, do we still have that infinite-memory camera?” Phineas asked.
Silently, Ferb shook his head.
“Drat.”
“Come on, everybody!” Baljeet said from the train. Sometime in the past minute–Isabella wasn’t sure when–he’d acquired and put on an old-fashioned conductor’s hat.
“Agreed, get on! If we don’t get a move on I’m going to get seriously bored.” Buford made a fist and eyed Baljeet menacingly.
Baljeet shrunk back, menaced. “Ye-e-s, let’s go, before Buford needs to take his boredom out on somebody and that somebody will be me!”
The group boarded the passenger car of the train. The interior designer of the train had clearly designed the room for luxe, enjoyable tourist-ing. The seats were made of the finest mahogany and velvet cushions, the floor was carpeted in a plush red wool, and tapestry-like curtains hung around the frames of each window.
“Chugga-chugga,” Buford shouted from his bench. He reclined back and the back of his head disappeared into the cushion. “Get this thing moving Baljeet!”
A train whistle broke through the air shrilly. “Onward to Svitz!” Phineas declared.
The train began to chug along, picking up speed as it went through the portal. Bright, electric blue wind rushed past the train windows, enveloping the car in a howling tunnel the likes of which Isabella had never seen before, and then just as quickly they’d passed through the vortex and the train glided silently through Svitz.
The passengers crowded at the windows.
Outside the landscape rolled by, a pleasant artwork made of shallow hills, verdant shrubs, and lone, wandering giraffes. They could hear musical tones playing, as if by themself, in the breeze. Isabella tilted her head and concentrated on the notes. They were oddly off-kilter. Discordant. Melodious and yet cacophonous all at once. Strange. Beautiful.
Disturbing.
“I don’t think I like this music,” Isabella said.
“You’ve already said that,” Phineas responded.
Isabella blinked. Had she? When?
“I have?” she asked, uncertainly.
Now Phineas blinked and looked confused. “I…I think so?”
“I’m having problems with my memory too,” Baljeet said over the intercom, from the locomotive’s cabin. “I can’t remember if Buford already bullied me today or not.”
“Me neither,” Buford said. “I guess I’ll just have to do it again.”
“I knew I shouldn’t have said anything,” Baljeet muttered.
In the back row of the car, Candace picked up a bell and rang it. “Phineas, where’s my club soda? You said you’d bring me one half an hour ago?”
“Did I?” Phineas looked concerned.
Isabella blinked.
The view outside now showed snow-capped mountains, their bases covered in coniferous forest. Small wooden houses dotted the mountainside. The train shifted treacherously underneath them as the train shuttled quickly around the mountainous path.
“What happened?” Isabella said, staring out at the new and unfamiliar place. “I don’t remember arriving here.”
“Us neither! We think Svitz has a weird temporal-memory-field of some sort,” Baljeet announced over the intercom. “That might be why no one visits it. They can’t remember it exists! We’re out of it now, though, and if everyone looks to their right and to their left and out any window they want they will see we are now in the country of Luftnarp. The pamphlet I am reading says that this country has a population of ‘eternal energy vampires’ and is home to the treasonous mountain goat and, oh this is strange, their most famous inventor, ‘unknowable alien script’, is known for inventing the scream.”
“Impressive,” Buford said. “Bullying wouldn’t be so satisfying without the scream.”
“I didn’t know anyone invented screaming,” Stacy said dubiously.
Even Candace appeared taken aback. “How do you
invent
screaming? Humans have vocal cords. We’re born able to scream.”
“And even babies can scream,” Stacy said.
Phineas, diplomatically, tried to come up with an answer. “I wonder if he lived a really long time ago, before humans had figured that out on their own.”
“Maybe he created vocal cords,” Isabella suggested. Although privately she doubted that theory. Maybe the maker of the pamphlet had lied? Phineas was so smart that sometimes he missed the obvious. And he was so, so, so, so, so, so,
so
smart. And funny. And kind. And easy to be around.
“Hey, look outside!” Candace pointed to the front right of the train. “There’s a bunch of people approaching us, maybe they want to say hi!”
“Baljeet, slow the train down!” Phineas called.
“Yes, I will do that immediately!” Baljeet responded. Immediately, the train jerked to a stop. And then, after everyone had picked themselves back up, the train picked up speed—specifically, the speed of a slow-moving slug with arthritis.
“Admittedly, we could probably go a bit faster,” Phineas confided to Isabella.
“Yeah, but this way we will get to talk to those people,” Isabella said.
“Alright, I’ll crack our window open and everyone can gather round.”
The train inched forward, closer to the people.
“Is something wrong with them?” Candace questioned.
“Candace, don’t be rude,” Stacy said. Then she leaned closer to the open window and saw them. “On second thought, be rude. What’s with those people?!”
The gathering horde of Luftnarpians stared at them. The train was almost adjacent to the horde.
The horde widened their eyes. They widened their mouths. Their mouths gaped and their skin, already gray and ashy, began to flake. Their mouths were abnormally large, as wide as saucers, as huge as a hungry, cavernous maw.
“Hi, everyone!” Phineas said.
The horde
breathed
as one, and in their throats was stuck an endless, ceaseless rattle of ominous intent.
“Do you think they speak English?” Phineas asked with concern. “We should have picked up a language guide—I don’t want to be
that
tourist who just expects everyone to know whatever I’m saying regardless of their local language.”
“Guys, guys, I think we need to
go,”
Candace said.
“Agreed!” Stacy chimed in.
“Well, it’s definitely our fault but we seem to have offended them, so maybe that’s a good idea,” Phineas said.
“Full speed ahead!” Buford commanded.
And the train whirred to a much more vibrant life, and peeled away.
For several minutes, the group sat in disconcerted silence, letting the mountains pass then fade away behind them. Collectively, without speaking, they agreed that Luftnarp was a slightly different country than what they were used to back home.
“And now, ladies, gentlemen, and anyone else on board, please cast your eyes to the right and left of the vehicle as we enter our final destination on this European tourist ride,” Baljeet said. “We’re now in the country of Franchia!”
They looked out the windows.
“Woah!” Isabella gasped.
“No way!” Phineas emphasized.
“Out. Of. This. World,” Stacy concluded.
“This is, indeed, sort of ‘cool’,” Ferb said.
Around the train, on both sides, Franchia revealed itself. The land of arches. A flat plain of brown dirt stretched out around them for miles, and clustered throughout were prehistoric, monolithic arches of fantastical size.
“According to the crumpled and outdated educational pamphlet Phineas found in a lamp, Franchia is a land with a population of 0 people, 0 animals, and 0 plants,” Baljeet narrated over the intercom. “The country is 953 square miles of flat, barren land interspersed with arches which may well have been left by a cosmic deity from a time beyond mortal comprehension. As you look, you will see the famed ancient, unending arches made of interconnected stone and decorated in an unknown hieroglyphics which have made this country so ignored by tourist companies everywhere.”
Isabella rolled down her window again. She shouted out into the void of wind, dusky night. “Hello!”
Hello…
Hello…
Hello…
The call echoed out.
Isabella listened for the final dying sounds of her voice.
She ignored the thought that it had been full daylight in Luftnarp moments ago.
“Can I try?” Buford asked. Without waiting for an answer, he screamed, “Nerds!”
Nerds…
Nerds…
Nerds…
Eventually that sound, too, died away.
From the locomotive, Baljeet let out a trivial whoop of joy, then unleashed his cry: “Convoluted metaphysics will do nothing to stop the determined scientist!”
Convoluted metaphysics will do nothing to stop the determined scientist…
Convoluted metaphysics will do nothing to stop the determined scientist…
Convoluted metaphysics will do nothing to stop the determined scientist…
“Nerd,” Buford said again.
“Wait, did you all hear that?” Candace asked.
They listened.
They heard… nothing.
“Try it again,” Buford said. “Something less nerdy.”
“I miss Jeremy!”
I miss Jeremy…
I miss Jeremy…
I miss Jeremy….
This time they all heard it.
Somewhere, far out in the ceaseless plain, a noise which could only be described as
beastly
responded to them.
And the sound was continuing.
And it was growing
closer.
“Everyone, it’s about time to go home, don’t you agree?” Phineas asked.
If Isabella didn’t know better, she might think Phineas was nervous.
“Yep!”
“Uh-huh!”
“Definitely. Time to go home.”
“Great visit, we’ve done it, back to Danville, stat!”
“Summon the portal, Baljeet!” Phineas called. “And Isabella, go shoot your litter-remover ray at the tracks. Let’s leave these countries as pristine as we found them!”
“So…how did everyone like the trip?” Isabella asked after they’d gotten back to the Flynn-Fletcher household.
“Honestly, I didn’t hate it,” Candace confessed. “If more of the boys’ hairbrained schemes let me put my feet up, I might not need to tell mom on them so often.”
“It was definitely interesting,” Stacy said.
“It was okay,” Buford pronounced, his tone implying that ‘okay’ meant ‘substandard’. “I get why no one visits those countries. We’ve been cooler places.”
“This week,” Baljeet added.
Isabella looked to Phineas for his answer. What did he think about the trip?
She never got an answer. Right at that moment, the boys’ platypus emerged from behind his tree, went up to Ferb, and leaned against him for a hug.
“There you are Perry!” Phineas said. “Boy did you miss a crazy day.”