Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-29313420-20160727001145

I have a pretty crazy sounding theory on Gaster (it is also long). So, everything started shortly after Asriel's death. By this point, gaster had already created the core, and became the royal scientist. He also has an assisstant, and possible son, named sans, and a protege named alphys. So, asgore and Toriel are grieving for therir son, and gaster had a plan to fix everyhting. At this point Alphys had moved up in ranking and became more like Gaster's partner. Asgore had then asked Alphys to study the souls, and eventually revived monster's with determination. Gaster saw how powerful determination can be, and wanted some for his experiment. However, none was left after Alphys's did her thing. Gaster decided to turn to monsters for determination(he didn't know that monsters did not have any). He did experiments on four monsters, which left only one of them alive. These four would later become gaster's followers(I'll get to that later). This can be seen as a representation of the four routes you have to play is you want to find gaster, three genocide, and one pacifist. Soon after more humans fell into the Underground and gastr had the determination he needed. He used determination to power a time machine.

When it came time to test the machine, sans was the only one present. Gaster chose to test the machine himself, but the experiment went wrong. Gaster was "killed" while testing the machine and he disappeared. Therefore he metaphorically fell into his creation. When a soul breaks in undertale upon death, it breaks into about five pieces. I think that gaster had been "infused" with enough determnination for his soul to persist for after death. Undyne has shown that a monster that has determination will not always melt. The five pieces of gaster's soul can be found as follows: One piece takes the form of goner kid(who is probably related to monster kid), one piece take the form of gaster follower #3, one piece possesses gaster follower #1(not really related, but the marks on his torso look like surgery marks more than abs to me), one piece is kept by gaster follower #2 (who was the only survivor), and one piece stayed with gaster's body therefore keeping him "alive-ish." Therefore he was "shattered across space and time."

The experiment was a partial success however. "Doctor Who" fans will know what I mean. I think that gaster has the ability to time travel as far back as the accident, but he cannot change that event however. Gaster can travel through time and arrive at  different locations. Determination is what causes all of this which is what allows determined beings to Save. Gaster is able to go back and forth through every timeline created using the power to Save. Sans knows what happened to gaster and may know that what happened to him is what caused the power to save. Sans's exposure to the machine may have been what gave him his powers, and now strives to fix the time machine. When sans said, " I gave up trying to go back a long time ago," I think he meant go back in time, because the one thing that sans appears to hate other than humans is the save power and the constantly looping timeline. having everything he had done erased by flowey when flowey was testing his new powers caused sans to give up on trying to save gaster. That is my theory. Also regarding entry seventeen, I believe that gaster was talking to sans and alphys, and he was talking about the creation of the gaster blasters. I think this because they shoot out a lasers-like energy, and photons are a particle of light. 