Aren't You A Little Young To Be Building An Interdimensional Portal?

Chapter 10

"Do you want help with anything?" Dean asks, watching as Phineas and Ferb build their machine effortlessly.

"No, we're good," Phineas says.

"Are you sure?" Dean asks. "'Cause I'm pretty good with building, too." He built an EMF meter out of a Walkman, for god's sake. He can definitely help them build an interdimensional portal with a blueprint right in front of them.

"Yeah, we're fine," Phineas says.

"Okay..." Dean frowns. This really looks like it would have been fun. Obviously, his first priority is getting home so he can try to find his mom, but still. If someone's going to build an interdimensional portal right in front of him, he'd like to get in on the action.

"You know," Isabella says to him, "you can drop as many hints that you want to work on this with him as you'd like, but he's not going to figure it out."

"What?"

"He's the smartest person I know, but he can be really dumb," Isabella says. "I'm just sayin'."

"Duly noted," Dean says.

"Uh, guys?" Phineas says warily. "Is there another transistor lying around somewhere?"

"Why?" Sam asks. "Didn't you already put one in?"

"It's not the one we ordered," Phineas says. "We'd blow the power in all of Danville — maybe in all of the tri-state area."

"So order a new one," Dean says.

"I will," Phineas says. "I was just hoping it was already lying around here."

"I don't think so," Isabella says.

"That's okay. I'll just get a new one." Phineas pulls out a cell phone — why do kids need cell phones at that age? — and explains that his part somehow got switched with a different transistor.

"So close, yet so far," Dean mutters, and Sam nods in agreement.

"What do you mean, you don't have it?" Phineas asks.

"Emphasis on the 'so far,'" Dean says.

"Someone else bought this exact transistor three minutes ago?" Phineas says, dumbfounded. "Okay, are you getting more in soon?"

There's a pause, as whoever's on the other end of the call speaks.

"You just sold your last transistor, and you're not getting any more?" Phineas says.

There's another pause.

"So someone else is trying to make an interdimensional portal?" Phineas asks. "That's... weird."

"I hope that someone's having better luck than we are," Dean mutters.

"Okay, thank you," Phineas says before hanging up. "I'm sorry, guys. It looks like we're out of luck."

Sam sighs. "Well, thank you for trying."

And they're back to square one.