fulllifeconsequences

Don't be ridiculous, Sans. I'm, like, five feet tall. I wouldn't fit.

maybe there was an event i wasn't aware of and you shrank.

it could happen.

though my sock drawer wouldn't be a very comfortable place to sleep.

[He is also now coming to terms with the fact that Chara is a full foot taller than him, holy fuck.]

[They aren't even five feet in actuality. They just like to embellish so they sound bigger and older than they are.]

Nowhere in your room is a comfortable place to sleep. I don't know why 4 willingly stays there.

i don't know either. he's a weird little guy.

[He could joke, go back to their games, say something like, "did you find any cool socks, i've got a pretty awesome collection," but. He's been too tired for games lately. And if the questions are coming, he'd rather just get them over with.]

did you tear a page out so that i would notice? or was it something else?

Both, I suppose? I do love to multitask.

[They stop to retrieve the crumpled-up paper. A little crinkly, but still intact. Their drawing sits on one side, so impossible to explain to someone who isn't Frisk that they're really not sure how to bring it up to Sans at all. On the other... whatever he was writing about. Wingdings is easier to speak than it is to write, and that says a lot when individual letters are represented by hands and mailboxes.]

What does the page I took say, anyway? It'd save me a lot of effort if you just wanted to translate it for me.

or at the very least you like things to have multiple meanings.

[Sans, on his end, goes and digs the notebook out of his drawer and flips to the offended page, trying to remember what the hell he even wrote. Mostly it was just notes. Random thoughts, equations.]

it's just science stuff.

considering how it went the last time i mentioned anything remotely scientific to you

i think i'd rather refrain from translating it.

[Also he can't remember what he wrote. This section seems to be about superstrings so, yeah, not gonna bring that up again. Ever again, to anyone, probably.]

I lose my cool a single time, and I'm locked out of the science club forever? Yeesh, you really are unforgiving.

[Haven't forgotten what he told them. How could they?]

I'd just lost an Asriel who I might have actually been an impostor to. The wrong Chara.

It's probably cheating that I allow myself to use the true name when nobody called me here with any name at all. Laughably enough, my sense of self on the very best days is what the cool kids call "a screaming disaster."

Surely you can understand why I didn't take it in stride as flawlessly as I usually do.

[Because, you know, coping with things in seamless and effortless ways is totally a thing Chara does all the time.

...Yeah, okay. Thinking about something else now. They're definitely trying to translate the page, purely because it's there.]

i get it, actually. you don't have to explain it or justify yourself.

[Then again, they kind of do. They have to justify themselves all the damn time. Their existence, their continued existence, their right to do so.]

[The wrong Chara. The wrong Frisk. The wrong Asriel. The wrong Sans. Considering it's starting to look like every single one of them is from a slightly different timeline or world, it's starting to also well and truly not matter.]

honestly that's not a thing that anyone takes in stride, unless they're already looking for it.

same with resets, timelines

the code you're trying to make sense of right now

no one takes this stuff in stride.

[Studying physics is basically constant existential dread. Hey, did you know that some scientists think the entire universe is a computer simulation? Did you know that energy can in fact be created and destroyed under certain circumstances? Did you know that dark matter is the most plentiful type of matter in the universe and no one knows what it is? Did you know that certain types of teleportation result in the original person being vaporized at point A and an entirely new person being formed at point B?]

science is creepy.

If everyone freaks out, then "you freaked out" is hardly a good reason to refuse to tell me about things. I was actually doing the normal thing for once! Give me credit for that, at least.

[They know the mailbox is a period, so let's see... they can tell where sentences end. Or, like... where decimal places are. Does wingdings replace numbers with symbols, too?

Cripes. What a headache. Maybe they should just pass this on to Dipper. He'd probably treat it like a code, not a font. Decipher it in no time. They're struggling to find the patience for this.

Struggling to find patience in general, really.]

I took your page because I was talking about code of an entirely different kind.

Why did you write this in wingdings?

Why aren't you the least bit alarmed I broke into your room?

"you freaked out" is a fairly good reason not to ever tell anybody anything.

[Just one of several reasons, really.]

habit, mostly.

[He'd made them learn the language--the font--and write in it whenever they were working on...what they were working on. Just in case some other scientist or some layperson saw a pile of notes. Couldn't have people asking what Resets were, or what they were really up to down in that basement lab. More of that freaking out thing.]

i'm too tired to be alarmed. plus you didn't break anything.

nothing important at least.

you didn't even have to pick my lock

which i guess means frisk was with you too

or i suppose you might have climbed in the window, but i don't think even you are that determined.

please don't take that as a challenge.

[Two kids break into his room and go straight for the secrets, because they know where to find them, and because it's a secret they've been after for months now. And he just can't bring himself to care. This was awhile coming, and, well, they're both the legendary fartmaster, sort of, so. They're entitled to some of these secrets, maybe?]

did you know that asriel was digging after the same thing?

i'd be surprised if he didn't tell you.

I know.

[Floweytale. He'd had much more power over the bones of the world than they ever had. He'd not just cracked the bones open, he'd shaped a whole new skeleton.

Even when he was empty, Chara could still speak to Asriel in variables.

But that doesn't matter anymore, does it? He's gone. He's forgotten them again. Remembering hurts. They're never going to look at those etched variables again.

ERASE. Drop that memory. Focus on something else.

He knows Frisk was with them. They're not in trouble. So... talking about Frisk is alright? They didn't ask for anything to be secret, they didn't ask Chara to promise, so would it... be a betrayal to tell someone?

Maybe they shouldn't. Frisk said they wouldn't act on it. Wouldn't need the CORE. Didn't seem to be digging on purpose? Probably just took a picture of the "don't forget" drawing for completionism's sake? Is it ratting Frisk out if they tell somebody they're worried? Does Sans even want to hear more of this exhausting stuff from Chara?

No. Probably not. Better just shut up. They can look after Frisk themselves.]

Hey, Sans.

What kind of person was he? The guy we're all trying to root out, just because we can.

[They know what he did and what became of him. That's history for you, right? Just a bullet list of the useful accomplishments, the way his legacy can he used to further their own goals. But they don't... ha, they can't even recall his name right now. They try to think of it, and they just scrape up against a wall. Against...

spr_mysteryman_0.png.

Can't go calling him that, can they?]

[They know. Kind of funny, considering Asriel promised he wouldn't tell anyone, but then again, a sibling doesn't count as "anyone." You can tell things to your siblings that you'd never tell anyone else. Everyone else's secrets are fair game when you have a sibling. You confide in them.]

[Unless you're like Sans and decide to confide in no one.]

[No one but Frisk, and he still regrets that, still wishes he could take back that entire conversation.]

[And there's the questions. This is what he was expecting. He's a little surprised that it took Chara this long. Surprised they didn't just lead with it the second he asked them about the sock drawer.]

[And what a question. What kind of person was he?]

[What kind of person was he?]

he was complicated.

he was very complicated.

[Look at him. Answering questions. Letting his secrets start to crumble around him, when he's always guarded everything so closely, when he so adamantly refused to say anything to Asriel. He's coming undone, isn't he?]

That could mean a lot of things.

[Is it one of those... "trying to phrase an awful thing very politely" kind of words? Chara's probably complicated in that sense. In the "not exactly the greatest person" kind of polite eyes-averted sense.

Maybe Sans gave up because what's-his-face was better off erased.]

What did you think of him? Maybe that's a better question to ask.

[Since Sans is... probably the only one still capable of having an opinion on the guy. They sort of wonder if he had a lot of friends, considering what an absolute pain it is to decipher any communication that is made strictly in wingdings, of all things. They've barely made any progress on this stupid page, and that was born of digging, of recalling the words ENTRY SEVENTEEN and picking out every E, every S, every T on the page one by one.

It really does seem like it's nothing relevant, but they've started the puzzle, and they obviously can't quit it halfway.]

[If they do end up translating it, it'll be nothing more than a few random thoughts about superstrings, written in Sans's characteristic carefree tone. Things like "alternate timelines =/= alternate dimensions," and "A1 vs handplate (B1?) probably an early branch or smth" and "can you even consider worlds containing the underground and worlds without (max's world?) to be parallel?" and "maybe perpendicular lol."]

[But boy. Isn't that an interesting question. Yes, "complicated" can mean a lot of things, but right now it means exactly what it means. Complicated. Complex. Hard to explain. Much like Sans's opinion of him. Much like their entire relationship. "Complicated" is the only word that can sum it all up.]

that's complicated too.

[But he's not being fair. He never is fair. And...well. It's high time he started thinking of Chara as the legendary fartmaster as well, just as much as Frisk. As much as that's incredibly stupid, but still. If he was willing to answer one or two of Frisk's questions, he has to be willing to answer one or two of Chara's.]

you know what's funny?

i'm not even trying to be difficult right now.

he was an incredibly complicated person and

even with people who are simpler to understand

you can have pretty varied opinions on them. or your opinions can change.

so, you know.

on the one hand, i kind of hero-worshipped the guy

on the other hand, he was a friend. probably my best friend for awhile

and on the mutant hand he

[His fingers pause above the keyboard. This isn't something he wants to admit to Chara. But he's pretty sure he...]

[He already did? Huh. Why is that, he wonders. Or...no. He said something recently. He can't remember it, but he said something...weird. When he was, ah, sick, only he can't remember if he said it before or after Chara left. He can't even remember what he said.]

[It's still not something he wants to admit.]

[But.]

[If anything will make them stop digging, maybe this will.]

he did worse to me than the anomaly ever did.

[Mission accomplished! They definitely regret ever thinking to ask. Should have stuck to the dry list of facts, of things that could be useful. There was absolutely no advantage to be had in asking what he was like, who he was, how Sans felt about someone he maybe probably missed.

But they asked, and now they get to deal with the cold, uncomfortable feeling sliding down their stomach.

Best friends. Hero-worshipped him. And in the end, he got ruined by it.

A thought: if Asriel were still here - a painful, painful thought - he'd probably say the exact same thing about Chara. And he... came to the same eventual conclusion, too? Chara's gone, and it's better they stay gone.

Chara isn't curious anymore.

They take a long time to send a reply, because they don't want to have to think about this. Detach from it. Wipe it out. Distract themselves with the page they stole, instead. When they do send another text, it's an abrupt shift of topic at least half an hour later.]

That's rough, buddy.

How do you know there's no Underground in Max's world? What do A1 and B1 represent? What's "handplate" stand for?

[It sounds like some kind of obtuse Grillby's reference. A plate of fries, a plate of burg, something like that?]

yeah.

[That was an awful long delay, and an awfully short answer, and an awfully abrupt change of topic. Maybe they listened. Maybe they...]

[Maybe there's some comparisons to be made there.]

[Both of them tried to end a world at least once, that's certainly true.]

[Probably best not to think of it right now.]

wow, already? nice job.

educated guess about max's world. just the fact that she and most of the other people here have no concept of monsters.

but maybe in some worlds humans really did forget about us completely.

it wouldn't really surprise me.

A1 and B1 represent two parallel timelines with some fundamental differences.

handplate doesn't really mean anything.

[Nothing at all.]

Wingdings is just a straight substitution cipher. I know e, r, s, t. Extremely common letters in our language.

[RESET. ENTRY SEVENTEEN.]

You name your variables very strange things.

[They just used "demon."

But that was code, not an equation. "Handplate" is altogether too long to be a mathematical variable.

Whatever. It's probably a pun.]

But worlds that have an Underground... in order to be parallel and not perpendicular - this doesn't really work with the definition of parallel, but bear with me - must have some sort of common source? The War of Humans and Monsters had to happen for an Underground to exist.

Anomalies like yours truly... we can travel to different timelines, and carry knowledge from one timeline to another. But we can't jump to Max's world, at least hypothetically - maybe she's on the other side of the country from me, but we exist concurrently, or she's from 17 years ago or something.

Do you think I could jump from A1 to B1?

fair enough. hard to memorize those symbols, though. harder still to understand it when it's spoken.

yeah. guess i do.

[Yeah, just him making a dumb joke. Funny.]

i mean, you can go even further back. say that monsters had to exist at all.

i've talked to so many people who seem to know for a fact that monsters like us don't exist in their worlds.

or that we're just legends or stories.

or that different sorts of monsters exist. i get that one a lot.

[A1 to B1. He has to think for a second to remember what he actually meant by that. A1 is usually how he designates whatever timeline he's currently in, because obviously, and B1 was...ah, right. Papyrus's timeline.]

theoretically it's possible

events in B1 progress in generally the same manner that they do in A1

at least as far as i can tell

but i don't really think so

i think that once the reset cycle begins, the anomaly is restricted to the set of timelines that branch from their initial original point

so in other words, A1's anomaly could jump to any A timeline

but the B timelines might be restricted to anomaly B

[Here he goes again, directly implying that there are multiple anomalies across the multiverse, even though he said he wouldn't talk about it anymore. But Chara seems to have, well, calmed down since then and...in his experience, there's ways to think about this sort of stuff objectively. It helps you avoid the existential dread that comes with knowing there's potentially infinite versions of yourself out there that are completely indistinguishable from yourself.]

[Though it also helps that Sans has never in his life felt particularly unique or significant.]

[It's... a little easier, they think, to talk about it in impersonal, clinical terms. Still difficult not to think of themselves as a constant - it's not like he knows, it's not like he's really aware on the level they are, how's he so positive that Chara isn't always Chara? That they're...

What if they never were Chara? What if there was a real Chara out there, a First Human who lived and breathed and hoped and died, and what awoke on the flowerbed isn't them at all? Just... one of a thousand nameless faceless invaders, tricking itself into thinking it's a person with a past and loved ones and dreams just because that makes the story more interesting? How do they know they're real, how do they know they're connected to that past at all if they can't reach it, if it's one of those meaningless little quirks of fate that renders other timelines entirely beyond their access? Or if... if they have this inaccessible bit of past in common with other Charas, then does that mean they are those Charas, in the same way a pacifist run Chara is the same person they were when they tried to turn everyone to dust? They haven't laid a SAVE in a long time - weeks, at least - if they tried a LOAD now, would they cease to be Chara because the Chara they were two seconds ago is now utterly inaccessible?

They... don't think they should ask him. Should just... simmer in it on their own. He feels guilty for talking to them about things with slightly more depth than shallow puns and vague threats. He'll just keep withholding things from them if they ask questions he doesn't like. Swallow it down, deal with it yourself. Be mature, reasonable, not a hassle to be around.]

How do you know that? Maybe B is doomed to be a universe that contains only the in-between neutral paths, while A is the one that contains only happy endings, and we jump to entirely different universes without being completely conscious of the differences between them.

In one timeline, you told me Papyrus' battle body was something he put together for a costume party a few weeks ago. I saw him in a "cool dude" shirt. I saw him in a "jogboy" shirt. In another timeline, you told me that his battle body was the only outfit he had.

Were you just lying purely for the sake of lying?

i think it's more that A and B both have their own, self-contained branching paths.

but then again i definitely don't know for sure.

i just know that something in B is fundamentally different from in A

so that the divergence point must have been far, far back in the timeline

long before frisk ever fell.

[He stares at the words on the bottom of the screen, fingers resting against the keyboard. This...]

[Doesn't make sense.]

[It's a tiny little thing, but. He remembers...there was a costume party, sure, essentially a Snowdin block party, and Papyrus wanted to look cool, so they designed it together. Fake armor, essentially, so he would look totally awesome. He just never took it off after that, wore it to bed and in the shower.]

[Did he ever say it was the only outfit he owned? He can't remember. That doesn't make sense. Who would only have one outfit? Well--sure, Sans basically never changes, but he still actually owns other clothes. Mostly novelty shirts. Spare shorts. You only have one outfit if you never expect to wear anything else. If you're never going to appear in more than--]

[That one--]

[Static fills his head.]

[Hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen...]

that's weird.

i don't remember that second one.

we made the battle body for a costume party and he just kept wearing it.

[Some inconsistencies are easy to justify. Mettaton claims he's just an entertainment bot because he doesn't intend to fight, because the lie Alphys cooked up to get her job doesn't matter anymore, because all he wanted to do with that body in the first place was entertain. Gerson says he isn't a hero in the same way that Frisk or Asriel would say they aren't one, because being everybody's only hope is a crushing weight and nobody on this planet can actually live up to it perfectly.

Doesn't make sense, though, why someone would lie about something like a ridiculous costume.

Sans says he doesn't remember, and Chara is immediately wary of that, because he always remembers, knows, picks up on secrets nobody should be able to. Poisonous flowers. Is this some kind of... is he keeping something up his sleeve? What's the point? What's there to gain from that? They can't keep up.

They can keep up. They can keep up with any adult.]

I had a theory.

On some level, I am a constant, am I not? At the very least, we can agree my consciousness dwells on a level above the timelines where Frisk falls. I remember each route, and those memories cannot be taken away. It would take something frighteningly powerful - something on the level of the CORE, perhaps - to override me, to take away my awareness.

[To erase system_information_963.]

So what if this elusive man of yours... what if he is scattered not just across our timelines, but across universes? He cannot be recovered because there are not enough fragments of him in any one universe to be reached.

I suppose, technically speaking, I cannot be entirely sure that the spaces where those Fun little shards showed themselves to us were all necessarily in our universe at all.

[A gray door that has always existed but doesn't exist, leading to a room that looked like Waterfall, but was never in Waterfall. Not a gray shade entering a spot that's usually empty, but a space tied to him and only him.]

absolutely.

probably a tier above frisk and a tier below the anomaly itself, maybe.

[It's a good theory. And he's impressed, because even if he thought of it himself already, it's pretty cool for Chara to come up with it on their own. Because of course. When someone is shattered across time and space, they're shattered across time and space. All time, all space. Permanently and irrevocably trapped in a state of nonexistence, in the cracks and seams between times and spaces and universes. In some senses, he is the in-betweens. The stuff you skip over from place to place, time to time. The place Sans passes through when he teleports, even though he passes through nowhere at all.]

[The place between awake and asleep, in a lot of cases.]

that's a good theory

nicely done.

and technically speaking, if you actually saw them...

then no, they wouldn't be in the universe at all

it's more like they're in between

not here, not there

it gets complicated when you think of stuff like this

but being nowhere is exactly the same as being everywhere

frisk mentioned there was a gray door somewhere

and a

little guy on a pier

do you remember any others?

or

where the door was specifically?

or what any of them said?

just curious.

[Just curiosity. It won't matter. He won't remember when he goes home, when he stands in those spots where people he once knew are and aren't. Even if he did, he wouldn't go looking for them. Any of them. They want to be left alone. It's better that way.]

[But he still...it's stupid. He still wants to know.]

[Is he... praising them? They thought sarcasm wasn't funny.]

I believe that I have the power to reach that "nowhere."

[Not necessarily by stumbling onto the spaces where a gray door stands, but by tearing down "somewhere" entirely. ERASE. If the world is gone, then where are they?

Not just that, either. The very bones of the world. An ability to perceive the spaces between atoms - numbers and strings, protons and electrons - to be, frankly, a dirty hacker. They stand in a single corner of Snowdin, nothing in sight but trees, and detect - 12 left. Does he know about that, too?]

It is evidence, at the very least, that it is possible to reach between universes. I feel it would be hasty to dismiss the idea entirely. I've spent a lot of time getting my insidious roots where they're neither wanted nor permitted, after all.

I know more than Frisk does.

[At least, they think they do. Can't entirely trust the idea that information just... what, digs itself up and neatly deposits itself into Frisk's head, but only the tidiest, most juicy bits?]

I could tell you things, if you're certain that because you can know, you have to. Theoretically.

[But first, they look away from the screen, close their eyes. Bend the world to their whims, anchor it down, drive a stake through a moment in the timeline.

* Determination.

They don't know, after all, what happens when they speak in impossible terms around anyone who isn't an anomaly. He can complain about a LOAD if he wants, but if the next word they send breaks him, then... well, Chara's putting down a SAVE before they do anything, and that's that.]

spr_mysteryman_0.png

Does that evoke anything at all, Sans?

maybe you can.

but just getting there and setting up camp isn't really an erase.

[More like moving some files to the Recycle Bin on a computer. They're still there. Out of sight, out of mind, but still there. Until you right click, Empty.]

[All those computer nerds say there's still a way to get things back after that, if you know how.]

i mean let's face it

it won't really change anything or matter.

not while we're here.

[But, well. They seem like they're willing to share something, and he's of course not expecting everything, because this is Chara after all.]

[But he's not prepared for the words that appear on the screen.]

[They're just words on a screen. .PNG. An image file? He blinks at the words on the screen.]

[spr_mysteryman_0.png]

[spr_mysterman_0.png]

[What does spr stand for?]

[There's a looming sensation in his head, the same sort of feeling he always got when Gaster stood over the back of his chair and did that annoying thing that people do when they watch you work watching the words on a screen as you type watching you plug in equations and run numbers and numbers and numbers and]

what.

some kind of image file?

[There's a looming sensation in his head, the same sort of feeling he always got when he looked at things a bit too closely, when the word fake came to mind, looking at stars in Wonderland and thinking fake, looking at stars in the Underground and thinking fake looking at the whole world and thinking fake on a higher level on every level]

[Some scientists think the world is a computer simulation.]

[Fun theory to think about. He remembers reading it in some science journal that came down the waterfalls in Waterfall (because Asgore's terrible at names because a place with Waterfalls should be called waterfall), "scientists test whether universe is a simulation," haha, yeah, everything's fake, on every level, on a higher level.]

[Static in his skull.]

* IC Inbox

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sans vs the fourth wall

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[SAVE 1.0]

1/? brb maximum disassociation

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