Okay. One major thing left to tie up - what the heck is up with the title?

PianoMan5, Sabrina06: Exactly that. She's spent so long being sure Candace was imagining it that she just can't see that Candace was right, and now that she's seen what the boys can do they're pretty much unbustable. Unless something proves that they were, in fact, doing bustable things when they were ten...like, say, teenaged Candace wandering into the antique store. (Had it not been for Quantum Boogaloo, I probably would have just let Linda realize that Candace was right all along.)

Axis21: More coming, yes. Probably the one where they go to college next; that's going to be mostly Ferbnessa fluff, from the looks of it.

14AmyChan: Now I'm trying to figure out just what Perry's going to do with the thing.

Candace and Jeremy had caught a flight to Hawaii for their honeymoon that morning; now Phineas, Ferb, and Isabella looked at the submarine in the Fletcher-Flynn backyard and thought about their next step.

Phineas scratched the back of his head. "I don't know, how do we take this public now? Do we just take it downtown and start showing it off?"

Isabella said, "My dad's a patent attorney. He knows a lot of inventors, maybe he has some ideas. Let's go ask him."

Samuel, sitting on the couch, looked up at the trio. "So, you've figured out how to make it work, eh? And now you want to take it public? Sit, let's talk."

Ferb took a chair as Phineas sat in the love seat next to Isabella, holding her hand. Phineas spoke up, "The idea is to make the information available so anyone can use it freely. While it's not quite as useful as the one we used was - no cancer-killing lasers, unfortunately - it could still do incredible things, and not just medical. Structural inspection, for example. We're not sure how we get it out there, though."

"Okay. I'm a patent lawyer, so that's how I tend to think. 'If all you have is a hammer' and all that. So, first thing, you document what you've done and how it works so that anyone who wants to could reproduce it. You file a patent on it, and then license it however you want."

"We want to give it away," Phineas said. The science was out there for anyone to find; how could he try to force people to pay him to use it?

"Okay, so you license it freely. Holding the patent makes it harder for anyone else to sneak in a claim on it. Do you want to hold the patent yourselves, or create something to hold it for you? A non-profit foundation could manage it and any other patents you file, and that gives you some legal separation from them."

"Okay, that sounds good. Who do we need to talk to?"

Samuel laughed. "That would be me. What do you want to call this foundation?"

Phineas looked at Ferb and Isabella. "Well, just off-hand I'd use our names. The Fletcher-Flynn-Garcia-Shapiro Foundation."

Isabella blushed a bit and said, "Fletcher-Flynn Foundation flows a lot better."

"Your part is important too," Phineas insisted.

"Yes, but this way we don't need to change the name in a few years," she replied.

Ferb shook his head and Samuel chuckled as Phineas fell back on the love seat. "Oh," Phineas said in a small voice.

The patent had been filed, although it would take time to wend its way through the bowels of the patent office. The foundation had been set up to hold the patent rights. Samuel, Linda, and Lawrence were in charge of it, in trust for their children until they reached eighteen next year. Samuel arranged for a press conference with demonstration.

After the demonstration, the few reporters who had shown up started asking questions. "How does this not violate the first law of thermodynamics? You're creating and destroying mass."

Phineas took up the microphone. "We're not creating or destroying anything. We're temporarily stashing particles in an alternate dimension that happens to be empty. Then, to reverse, we pull the particles back. Thermodynamics still holds across the set of universes."

"So, you've filed for a patent for this, but are giving the patent rights to anyone who wants to use it? Why?"

Isabella leaned toward the microphone. "It wouldn't feel right to charge for access to this. It would feel like we were charging people to use gravity."

Another reporter asked, "You've said you intend to find more nontraditional science that you can make available to everyone. Do you have any idea what sort of thing you'll do next?"

Phineas spoke up again. "We haven't decided yet. Right now the plan is to finish up high school and go to college to get a grounding in what's conventionally possible."

Vanessa watched the news from the trading floor of her job on Wall Street. A coworker shook his head at it.

"I don't get it," he said. "That patent was worth billions - billions! With a 'b'! And they're just giving it away."

"They said they want everyone to have access to this."

"Me, I want to retire at 30. Get a patent like that and I wouldn't have to wait even that long." He sighed. "Okay, I'm going to go work on which stocks will be affected by this. Maybe we can make some money on the deal anyway."

Vanessa watched the news until the segment ended, then went back to her desk and pondered. Dad built stuff like that all the time, but it never worked for anyone but him. It didn't work for anyone including him, most of the time.

Maybe Ferb's on to something there. And working on that sounds a lot more interesting than staying here. Maybe it's time to look into graduate school.

Phineas and Ferb were just getting back from the first day of their senior year of high school when their mother met them at the door. "Boys, I have good news for you."

"Taco night tonight?" Phineas asked hopefully.

Linda laughed. "Even better. Samuel just called. Apparently the Page Foundation has decided to fund your research. They gave enough money to the Fletcher-Flynn Foundation to pay for college for all three of you, with some to spare."

Isabella snuggled up with Phineas on the couch, full of Phineas's mother's tasty tacos. "I guess we don't need to worry about paying for college," she said.

"Now we just need to worry about which college to go to. Can we find one for both of us? Maybe all three of us? One that has a good business school for you, a science school for me, and an engineering school for Ferb?"

"Is it that important to you that we go to the same place?"

"I've heard too many horror stories of couples splitting up after they go off to different colleges. Candace and Jeremy barely stayed together that first year he was at college, and he was just going to Danville University." Phineas paused, and looking her in the eyes, said, "And...I don't want to be away from you that much. I was kind of hoping that we'd be able to get an apartment together, like Jeremy and Candace did when she was a sophomore."

"Would our parents go for it?" Isabella asked.

"My parents let Candace do it. And, right this minute, your parents seem to think I walk on water."

Isabella chuckled. "That they do." She brushed his cheek with her hand. "I can think of few things I'd like better than to wake up with you every morning. But that would require somewhere that doesn't require us to live on campus, since I don't think they'll let us share a dorm room."

"That takes out most of the Ivy League schools. Excellent schools for all of us, but they generally want freshmen to live in the dorms."

"Danville University isn't known for a good business school, unfortunately," Isabella noted.

Ferb's voice came from the entryway to the kitchen. "I have heard that the Quad-State Institute of Technology has been building up their business school recently. They're certainly known for their science and engineering programs."

"Really? I hadn't considered Quasi-Tech." Isabella asked, "What are their rules on freshman housing?"

Ferb sat down with his laptop. "They recommend but do not require on-campus housing."

"It's in Marshwood, right? That's only three hours away - far enough that Mom and Dad won't drop in unannounced, but close enough that we can come back to visit easily," Phineas said.

"Ferb, let me see the info on the business school? This is sounding like a solution that works for all of us," Isabella added.

Phineas looked at his brother and girlfriend. "Ferb, Isabella...I know what we're going to do next year."

Quasi-Tech and Marshwood (guess where that name came from, eh?) will show up more in "What's Up, Doc?" which should start showing up here within the next couple weeks. I have a couple shorter pieces that will be coming out by next weekend.

I want to thank everyone who's read this far. Your attention is a gift for which I am endlessly grateful.

I especially want to thank my reviewers - you're all awesome. Extra special thanks to: 14AmyChan, for support above and beyond the call of duty; Axis21, for asking the question that I was hoping somebody would ask and putting up with me answering it like a smart-aleck; PianoMan5, for reminding me that I can't just drop things into the beginning of the story and assume everyone remembers them a week later; Sabrina06, for attempting to help my horrible science; and Pantalaimon96, for sympathy and writing advice that I needed.

And, finally, I want to thank Dan and Swampy for creating the show that got me writing again after all these years.