The autumn wind had a biting edge. Brittle brown leaves crunched under a pair of black sneakers. Occasionally, squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, and even a fox once darted away through the undergrowth. The forest still bore its mystique, but it held a growing loneliness. "Reminds me of the ruins today, with less traps," she mumbled to herself.

Every so often, Frisk paused in her walk and closed her eyes. She'd been walking this path daily for a number of months now; she'd been searching for longer, finding teeny clues and tiny theories along the way. Nothing substantial had come of this yet. Sans had teased her just yesterday that doing something over and over again expecting a different result to come was a form of madness. But it wasn't the exact same. It was different days, different experiences, all little things but eventually those little things had to line up just right to find what she was searching for. There had to be answers for one lingering little mystery.

Something caused the back of her neck to tingle. She put a hand there, pausing a little longer. She could be psyching herself out, as she had done before on some fruitless days. But the feeling persisted. Magic of time… a memory of SAVE resurfaced, wavering letters in the depths of her mind. Frisk grabbed her phone immediately and checked the time. 5:13 PM. Dialing a number that she knew was empty, she listened for a dial tone. It had crackling in it.

"Finally," she muttered. But there wasn't much time. She put her bag down on the spot and got out her laptop. Connect the phone to the laptop, open up relevant programs… one to screen out the noise, another to detect magical patterns, another to record what happened…

She put the dummy call through a couple of times, but stopped as the clock moved over to 5:17. There was a rumor going around, probably an urban myth but it was worth investigating. At 17:17:17 on a 24 hour clock, if you made a phone call right then, you might end up with a dial tone that you could just barely hear someone speaking through. It was the kind of thing that could be what she was looking for.

10… it had to be the right place, right time, right luck… 15… almost… 17… Frisk hit dial on the phone. Her laptop speakers didn't even ring, going straight to the dial tone. The drone of it was no longer crackling; it also wasn't steady. While it wasn't clear, it was like someone speaking through a fan. The programs on her computer, which were used to clean up ghost recordings, worked to pick out the words. They came out as apparent gibberish.

"That's him," Frisk said, feeling glad.

The gibberish had to be translated, which gave her the message. 'You're persistent. That's dangerous.'

"I've always been this way, Dr. Gaster," Frisk replied. "It's good to hear from you again."

When she'd gone to the Underground as a child, she'd first heard of Gaster from a strange gray monster in Hotland. She'd grown more used to monsters, so even with them being stranger than usual, the monster hadn't scared her. They talked about Gaster being the Royal Scientist before Alphys, creating the Core. Unfortunately, the Core became his end somehow. She gone to call someone after speaking to the gray monster (she didn't remember why) and only got a dial tone. But it had sounded like someone got startled, then said 'Hi' before disconnecting.

They'd managed to get in contact in brief spurts since then. 'It is nice that you talk to me. But researching this phenomenon may end you. It may merely turn you gray, but it may end you.'

"No, there must be something to this string of phenomenon," Frisk said. This should be more stable than their usual conversations, but it was best to get to the point. "You were the Royal Scientist. Don't you want to know what's going on?"

There were a few seconds of just dial tone. She almost thought she'd lost him, but then Gaster replied, 'Magic draws from the unknown; science makes the unknown known. When the two begin to blend, there is chaos until one of the two wins out. Balancing both is a delicate act that can be ruined by something as insignificant as the weight of a hair.'

She knew that quite well. "Sans can manage it, but he won't tell me how."

'It would benefit him more for that to remain unknown to others. It may benefit you more to keep science and magic separate. I didn't do so.'

"I don't think that's possible to do now. When our kinds were separate, humans developed science while you monsters maintained a knowledge of magic. Now that monsters and humans are living together, knowledge of science and magic are being exchanged. So if you could help, mistakes like yours won't be remade."

'The mistakes could grow worse.'

"Don't you want to be free again? If we don't try, you and the others are going to be stuck as you are." It frustrated her that he was so resigned. A lot of monsters had been like that before she helped them return to the surface, though. But with him being a scientist, she always hoped that he would want to keep trying things.

Given how often these scattered conversations went in circles, his answer surprised her. 'Sometimes I do, since I started talking to you. But what affect would that have? I was taken out of the world and only my followers know I ever existed. They began to turn gray as they searched for limbo. Suddenly being back in the world might destabilize my surroundings as it did to them.'

"Taking you out of the world didn't take away your works," Frisk said. "And your name is still around even for people who haven't spoken to you like this. I don't think it will be quite as dangerous as you're imagining."

'I miss a great many things about being physically in the world. I've changed, though, and that could cause problems. Also, I'm concerned about you. You're an intelligent young woman to figure out how to talk with me. Surely there's better things you could be doing with your talents.'

Possibly. But this wasn't the only thing she was studying. "Researching how you linger in the cusp of existing and not existing is a massive breakthrough in the study of science and magic. It's like decoding the programming of secret technology. Sure, it can be frustrating at times due to a lack of the right information and the difficulty in just talking to you. But if we can figure this out, our civilizations could take a tremendous leap forward in understanding the world as a whole. Not to mention that the Core is a brilliant masterpiece that the engineers of us humans can't decipher. Having you back could solve so many problems, like energy resources."

'I was reckless, trying to find a common thread in scattered bits of information. There seemed to be nothing more to find, so my peers wisely gave up when I persisted, much like you are now. But you think I could still do good in the world?'

She nodded absentmindedly. He might be watching; it was hard to tell. "Sure thing. It'd be better than having you in limbo for eternity, for you and for anyone you could be helping right now. And if I can bring you out of limbo, there are other souls that I could potentially save from limbo too."

'I see. I think I know who you mean. It's ambitious of you to attempt rescuing me, and ambitious to the point of being improbable with him. He very certainly died and it would be a riddle to make certain that his soul returns.'

"His fusion with human souls has left his essence lingering much longer than is normal for monsters," Frisk pointed out. "And given how the existences of monsters and humans differ, I believe there's a chance. It may indeed be improbable, but that's not impossible."

'You're a dangerous human,' he replied. 'The sheer force of your determination is enough to make us believe in uncertain things.'

"Isn't that a good form of dangerous?" she asked, smiling at the screen.

There was something in the wavering dial tone that was different than usual. Gaster almost sounded amused this time. 'Maybe. Frisk, are you doing this also to try retrieving your power of SAVE?'

So he'd noticed that despite his dissipated existence. "I won't deny that it's always a temptation to have that kind of power again. I know I shouldn't use it; I'm an adult now and I should accept the consequences of my actions. But without understanding that kind of power, we risk having someone irresponsible use it and trigger another temporal anomaly such as what led to your current existence."

'Magic draws from the unknown,' he repeated. 'That is why the magic of children will not work for adults without special training. SAVE would take a great deal more effort and understanding on your part for you to use again. But I agree; it is an easily abused power and understanding it better will lead to ways to mitigate the damage.'

"Do you want to come back and help me with that?" Frisk asked.

This time, he definitely laughed. 'I guess even with what I've done to myself, the bug of curiosity can still bite. Very well.' A new window popped up on her laptop, downloading a file. 'You persisted in finding this method to contact me. This is a design for something that may help. You require finding a thin spot like this where magic and technology allows you to listen to me. With this, you will have numerical data on the thinness of the divide between reality and limbo, so to speak. It should make it so that you don't have to rely on a human's weaker sense of magic to find these drifting spots.'

"Great, then maybe we can find spots where you can manifest again," she said, grateful that he'd finally decided to take this chance. It'd be a lot better for her theories to have something that could actually measure these vague nonphysical concepts too.

'It will introduce chaos in a conflict of magic and science,' Gaster warned her. 'You will have to find a way to navigate that tension without upsetting the balance.'

"I'm sure I can find a way," Frisk said, confident in that. Magic did draw from the unknown, but a certain amount of understanding was required to use it, at least for an adult human. That understanding should see her through this process of rescuing Gaster and other monsters from their state of limbo.

There was a patch of slightly gray skin on her arm now, but Frisk was sure that she could find some way to reverse even that.