Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26006155-20190425222457/@comment-32182236-20190512122534

--Chapter 9:The Darkness Keeps Growing, Holes Cutting Deeper--

Sans “(deadpan) If you ask me? I think we could use more light...”

Papyrus: SANS!! DID YOU FINALLY LEARN TO CAPITALIZE YOUR WORDS? YOUR BROTHER IS SO PROUD OF YOU!!!

Sans: hey, I've capitalized before. remember that time I talked about LOVE? come on, let's just help g out.

(The lights flick on, revealing a mad scientist laboratory deep in The Core decked out to the 9’s, with computer screens everywhere)

The 9's? ...I don't get it. Are they from the damage display?

Papyrus “Behold, dwellers of the dark! I, The Great Papyrus, have found the Switch of Light, and brought happy radiance back to the lightless recesses of this distressed stronghold!”

Sans: um, paps? you don't sound all that excited.

Papyrus: WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, BROTHER?

Sans: you didn't capitalize your words.

Gaster isn’t happy “This was a Top Secret operation! No one other than us was supposed to know about it! How did the word get out!?”

Papyrus: COME ON, GASTER!! AREN'T WE FREEING EVERYONE? WHY DID WE HAVE TO KEEP IT A SECRET?

Sans: because it might go wrong and make him fall in? wouldn't want to get everybody's hopes up if it failed.

Gaster “The WORRY is that this operation has to be done PERFECTLY, and we can’t have any more unexpected distractions! Any unknown variable could ruin everything!”

Sans: that works too. pretty close to what i said, too.

Gaster looks at him. “They’re acting friendly at the moment because they don’t know we’re humans. Have you stopped to wonder exactly what would happen if our disguises failed? We’re trapped in an underground civilization of creatures dedicated to the destruction of humanity. One wrong move.. And WE could bring that about! And who’s to say they wouldn’t find a way to invade our world afterwards?”

Papyrus: LOOK, IF ANY OF US KNOWS MONSTERS THE BEST, IT'S ME! BECAUSE I AM A MONSTER! AND US MONSTERS ARE QUITE PEACEFUL! ALL WE HAVE TO DO IS CONVINCE ASGORE TO NOT DESTROY HUMANITY, MAYBE BRING THE QUEEN BACK, AND HUMANITY WILL BE SAFE!

Sans: yeah, i'm more worried about humanity declaring war again and banishing monsters again.

...Well, it WOULD only take one monster to absorb enough souls and destroy humanity... So I actually side with Gaster here.

...But by your theory, monsters CAN'T display darkness, which would mean that such a feat isn't going to happen. Which would make Gaster wrong here.

Sans meets his gaze “But once they learn humans were the ones who broke the barrier for them, they wouldn’t want or need to destroy humanity anymore. They’ll live on the surface with us, as friends! Just think, Scooby and Snoopy will finally have dates!”

Must be before Sans turned into the way he is now..

“I’ve been wondering about some of your Core design for a while. Why so many lasers, traps and security robots on the inside? I also see you’ve made some new blasters.. Is there something I should know about?”

Papyrus: WELL, WE WOULDN'T WANT ANY PESKY HUMANS SHUTTING THE EXPERIMENT DOWN NOW, WOULD WE?

It.. must be a glitch in the security protocols. We’ll fix the robots.. We’ll fix EVERYTHING.. Right after this experiment is finished.”

um, doc? why would a glitch in the protocol make monsters fall down before they're supposed to? something's telling me that this is the anomaly that we came here to stop.

Gaster:DO YOU SEE ANY TIMELINES JUMPING LEFT AND RIGHT? ...NO? THEN THIS IS NOT THE ANOMALY. LET'S JUST DO THE EXPERIMENT.

“Yes.. save the worlds. Of Humans. And.. monsters.” he sighs, then looks meaningfully at Sans “Sans.. you must understand something. This thing that I’m doing.. I’m doing it for you. I’m an old man, I don’t have much time left. But you’re a young hero, and our world is going to need you. I have to get you back home, no matter what the risk or cost.”

Sans: um, doc? how is breaking the barrier going to take us back home? you know we don't come from the surface up there.

“Your mother was wroth with me after our last adventure, she told me that *I* was grounded. Before we left, I promised her I’d bring you back. (slowly, very meaningfully) No matter what.. I had.. To do.”

..I wonder which Mother game that happened in..?

Gaster calmly moves over the portal, fiddling with some controls by the little box. “Only the power equivalent of seven human souls can destroy the Barrier. And Asgore has collected six. But I found a way to equal the power of a seventh soul, without having to sacrifice you or I. We can have that power.. If we collect the souls of almost all of the monsters.”

Sans: doc? didn't you already take that power of my.. "SOUL"? you already have mine. that, plus the six we've collected, is enough to break the barrier.

Gaster shake his head in disapproval “People say so many things are impossible, because they don’t have the courage or imagination to try.” he turns to Sans “Human souls persist after death because they have an energy in them called Determination. Once I figured out how to extract this energy, I could inject it into monsters and steal the souls from their still-living bodies, leaving behind an empty husk that would gradually decay over time.”

Gaster:I TOOK YOUR "DETERMINATION", NOT YOUR "SOUL POWER".

“THEY TRUSTED YOU!” Sans screams “*I* TRUSTED YOU! You’re going to genocide an entire underground world of friends just so we can GO HOME!?”

Gaster:NOW NOW… THEY WON'T BE KILLED... THEY'LL JUST BE SOULLESS. LIKE OUR LITTLE FRIEND..

Sans staggers “Doctor! I don’t know what you’ve done to yourself.. But you’re becoming corrupted! A darkness is consuming you! You have to STOP!”

Gaster:WHATEVER DO YOU MEAN? THE UNDERGROUND IS QUITE A SMALL PLACE. NOBODY LIKES IT DOWN THERE. THEY NEED TO BE FREE.. AND THAT WOULD REQUIRE A LITTLE.. SACRIFICE. BUT THOSE WHO SURVIVE? THEY'LL KNOW NOTHING BUT CLEAR SKIES. IT'LL BE A PARADISE. I'M THE ONLY ONE WHO KNOWS THAT. AT LEAST I'M THE ONLY ONE WHO HAS THE WILL TO ACT ON IT.

Sans: you're acting just like thanos, and you still don't think you're being corrupted?

Gaster chuckles darkly “Our world will welcome me back as a hero. We’ll bring our captured monsters from the Core back with us. They won’t be free.. But they’ll see the surface. And then we can breed them, turn some into invincible abominations, and harvest the rest to supply souls for those in power, so they might stay in power, and heed my every word. Discovering your monster friends will be the greatest thing that ever happened to mankind.”

Sans: yep. you're definitely corrupted. if you really just wanted to free everyone, you would have just let them go after you broke the barrier. after all, wouldn't our friend be enough to take care of things?

“You see.. As troublesome as he’s been in the past, I still need your Doctor friend, just like I need all of my instruments to effect change in this world. His fine mind is an invaluable tool. And if I could turn you dark as well, your courage and strength would be great assets for me.”

Sans: oh, i didn't know i ended up in that other timeline. doc, didn't i already fight you before? if we ever meet again... you're going to get the... sh..... ....i....

Sans stares at the haywire portal that Gaster disappeared into in disbelief. Then he’s rocked by a series of horrific pains as the screen suddenly rewards him a staggering boatload of Execution Points, and one Level of Violence after another. A surge of compounding damnation as his screams echo off the walls, just before the Core circuit breakers give out again, and everything plunges back into darkness

Papyrus: WHAT'S WRONG, SANS? DIDN'T YOU KILL OFF LOTS OF ALIENS BEFORE? IF YOU WERE A PACIFIST, YOU BROKE THAT LONG BEFORE GASTER, LONG BEFORE WE EVEN MET!

“SAVED?” Sans spits out the word “I haven’t SAVED anyone! Gaster and I are the reason everyone was in danger in the first place! If we hadn’t come here, the Core would have never been built, and none of this would have happened! If I hadn’t been so.. DAMN STUPID!.. And let Gaster do all of this, so many people wouldn’t have gotten hurt! And I had to kill my best friend to stop it!” he grabs Papyrus’ arm “I had to kill my best friend, Papyrus! I JUST KILLED MY BEST FRIEND!”

For the second time.

Also, by that point, he was no longer the friend you knew, Sans. He was Giygas. You killed Giygas!

Sans stares “Papyrus.. THAT’S IT!” Sans looks at the portal, then around the lab “Gaster was studying traveling through time and space. He made that portal at first to look for a dimension where the Barrier didn’t exist. I CAN go back in time, and try to change the future! Papyrus, YOU’RE A GENIUS!”

I've always wondered why he didn't just go back in time to before the barrier was made... it'd solve everything without the need for the sacrifice. but, it seems freeing everyone was never his intention to begin with.

Sans finishes programming the Portal, which glows white. “OK, it’s ready. We’re going to appear in Snowdin a few years before the other me arrives, hopefully we can do something about Gaster before then.” he turns to Papyrus, and hands him one of the Gaster Blasters “There’s several miles to the Snowdin. We’ve got a full rack of blasters, half a pack of spaghetti. It’s dark outside, and we’re wearing sunglasses.”

This is what gives me the conclusion that if we take your premise to its logical conclusions, there must have been three timelines, rather than two. That statement implies that Frisk and Gaster went to the world as humans first, then went back to before 201X, and that's when the experiments began. Meaning we have an Alpha Timeline, where Gaster was never the Royal Scientist at all, meaning there likely was never a CORE or anything.. a Beta Timeline, where Gaster was the Royal Scientist, and the experiments and everything happened, and a Gamma Timeline, the one where Gaster died at/before 201X.

In the Beta timeline, Sans never made the journey as Frisk, because he was working with Gaster the whole time.

Which would make the Alpha Timeline far different than the Gamma Timeline. And also different than how I imagined it the last time I deconstructed it (I visualized it as what I now consider the Beta timeline)

And that’s how I believe Sans and Papyrus left the original Alpha timeline, and established the Beta timeline by warping several years into the past. As a last-ditch attempt to change the past to save the future.

You seriously think the events of Undertale happen only a few years after 201X? I date it centuries afterwards, considering how long ago the war was, and Chara being the first human to naturally fall in the Underground.

If you're wondering why the fallen humans and Frisk don't have futuristic technology, and why the city on the Surface is not futuristic, it's because the monster calendar is not a match to the human calendar. "201X" was actually perhaps the 18th century from a human perspective.. Or maybe even earlier than that.

Papyrus may say that he doesn’t know what humans look like, but all the other Undertale monsters have no trouble figuring this out. A human was a member of the Royal Family for a while, not too long ago, and the Royal Guard is certainly briefed about them as part of their orders to hunt them down.

"Not that long ago"? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb8LuokrlAM

A long time ago, a human fell into the RUINS.

Sans might have also seen no point in rewinding time because Gaster was already infected by the alien from their world even before they arrived, and he couldn’t rewind time far enough to undo that. And if Sans told the monsters in the past what Gaster was planning, they would have followed Asgore’s orders and harvested them both.

They could have only mentioned the vessel, the SOUL absorptions, and literally everything except the fact that they're human.

Or it could be, since we find the same type of bandages in Chara’s coffin, and wake up right where Toriel had buried Chara, that Frisk and Chara share some sort of linked destiny that spans timelines, much in the same way that both Alphys and Gaster both created Flowey? We assume that Frisk fell from above before our game began, but the while we saw this happen to Chara, Frisk may have simply teleported or warped to the Ruins rather than falling.

*Golden flowers. They must have broken your fall. -Chara Dreemurr