fulllifeconsequences

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.]

what does

spr

mean

[Some kind of image f͇̮̻̙͕̿̽̂ͭi̶̹̠̩̟̥̮̙̍̅̉ͤͮ̃l̷͕̎ͯ̈́̑̈́eͣ͏̯̘͔̺?]

the world can be reduced entirely to numbers

it's nothing new

[They did this on purpose.]

[They do everything on purpose.]

[Reset. Restore unit to factory settings.]

[Erase. Reset. Save. True Reset. Name the Fallen Human. Six letters or less. They would always comment on the amount of letters, because there's only so much space.]

[There's only so much]

[Memory]

not enough memory

to teleport you'd need the correct map values

wouldn't you

it's what you would call dr. wingdings gaster if you looked at him from the right angle

does that evoke anything at all, chara?

this was cruel of you

even for you

this was cruel

you can't even guarantee that i won't remember this

does that evoke anything at all?

Because you could, you had to. You had to know, didn't you?

[This has been an interesting series of texts. He asks, not knowing what he's in for, despite all his warnings that no good will come from digging. But intention and ignorance are no excuse, are they? Only the result matters once you reach the golden hallway. Only consequences. They learn they don't belong to anyone, don't belong to the world, aren't themselves because a thousand other people are already Chara, while they sit next to a pile of poisonous leaves. There isn't even a chance they won't remember. They're nothing but memory.

Doesn't feel good, does it? Doesn't feel good to get more than you bargained for. Doesn't feel good to be the one playing the judge, take an impulsive action and distort it into a death knell. This was cruel of them. They can see it in the incoherent, disjointed way he answers, in the stark finality of him realizing what that phrase means, really means, in hearing Gaster's first name for the first time.

It doesn't feel good at all.

And yet... it doesn't feel bad, either.

It feels like gaining EXP does, because it doesn't feel like anything at all. Only... indifference. Tepid blankness.]

It evokes nothing.

Maybe Frisk will have a different answer, though. They were the one who uttered that phrase to me.

[Looked all surprised. Gosh, didn't even think about it! Doesn't everyone glean phrases like that? Just one phrase can't really hurt, barely even counts, right?

Well. Apparently, it counts.]

Let's find out if you recall.

[And back they go.]

Edited (i used the wrong word entirely good job me) 2016-09-03 07:37 (UTC)

[Try again.]

Well, Sans? I could tell you about some Fun things.

Is that what you really want?

[Just curiosity. It won't matter. He won't remember when--]

[He won't remember...]

did you just

[His head is filled with static.]

[A looming sensation.]

[His soul is fluttering, like he's coming down after the worst of it.]

[Hydrogen, helium, lithium...backwards from ten.]

[What did...what did they just do to him?]

[Why is he shaking?]

nah

i think i'm done here

[There's nothing else.]

* IC Inbox

sans vs the fourth wall

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1/? brb maximum disassociation

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