The doctor smiled as he entered the examination room. "So!" He clapped and rubbed his hands. "Little Alicia is here for her three week wellness checkup, is she?"
Lisa Pembrooke nodded. "A quick in 'n' out," she confirmed. "She's been a perfect little angel." Lisa and her husband sat next to each other, her baby Alicia in a onesie and wrapped up in blankets. The child's eyes were closed and she breathed slowly through her nose and mouth at the same time.
"Is that so?" the doctor said, reaching for the infant. The baby opened her eyes halfway to look at him with a perfectly neutral expression. As he took Alicia he noted she hung limply in his hands before he set her on the table. "That's a little odd. Babies tend to get cranky when they're tired, but she must be so exhausted she can't even cry. You've been giving her plenty of rest, yes?"
Reginald squeezed his wife's shoulder as she explained, "She's been getting lots of sleep; she's rarely up for more than thirty minutes at a stretch. A couple times she's even fallen asleep during feeding."
The pediatrician hummed and his eyes narrowed. He decided to act on a hunch and do an examination out of order. "I'm going to administer a blood oxygen test first. It's probably nothing but I want to be sure." He clipped a machine over the infant's wrist. The child squirmed and gurgled but made no move to remove the offending object. Ten seconds later the data on the screen updated. The pediatrician exhaled through his nose. "One more time," he promised, switching wrists to repeat the test. The results came back the same. "Well. I don't mean to alarm you, but today won't be as simple as you hoped. We'll have to run some additional tests. We might need to keep her for a few days, maybe even perform surgery depending-"
"Surgery?!" Lisa gasped. "But… Why? She's fine! Alicia's been doing fine! Why would you need to cut her open?"
The pediatrician sighed. "That she appears so normal is a good sign, but just because she seems healthy does not mean she is healthy. A blood-oxygen reading is a measure of how much oxygen is being carried by the red blood cells in her arteries. Typically, we see readings from 95 to 98. Anything below 90 is a cause for concern." He pointed at the electronic readout and tapped it to call attention to a number. "Alicia's is 54. I don't want to alarm you Mrs. Pembrooke, but your daughter is very sick. There are only a few things which could cause this, and all of them are bad." He took a deep breath. "We will do everything possible, and I have high hopes that we have enough time to turn things around. But you should still prepare yourself for the worst."
Lisa and Reginald studied each other's faces, each hoping to find comfort in the other. Their hands squeezed together tightly. Alicia lifted her hands over her head and closed her eyes, trying once again to fall asleep, completely unaware of how precarious her life really was.
Frisk sat on a log Undyne had rolled over before and was staring at their phone in one hand while a campfire weenie on a stick in the other. Someone had wrapped some pre-made croissant dough around Frisk's hot dog and toasted it in the fire. Frisk lifted their head very slightly and Silas followed their gaze. Most everyone was now seated around the fire in a wide circle. Only Chad and Asgore were standing; Asgore simply because he took up so much room, while Chad hovered behind Susan and Marty to keep all the monsters within his field of vision. No one was paying any attention to Silas or Frisk, situated outside the circle. This was as good of an opportunity as he was going to get. He walked closer to Frisk and called out, "Hey-"
Frisk gasped and hid their phone screen by thumping it against their chest. If their eyes were open no doubt their pupils would be as large as dinner plates. They swallowed once before greeting, "You're… Mr. Pem-broke."
The corner of Silas' lip twitched. "Pembrooke," he corrected. He attempted to squat down to face them at eye-level, but the first time he tried to squat with his knees together so he had to straighten up and try again with his knees apart this time. Still working on that. "Wouldn't you rather be closer to the fire? It's not that warm out tonight."
Frisk shook their head. "I don't… get cold. 'M fine." He might have chalked it up to youthful stubbornness if Frisk's teeth were chattering or they were huddling up on themselves, but they really did seem to be perfectly comfortable despite only having a long-sleeved shirt and shorts. The only sign of stress was the death grip they held on their phone, clutching it to their chest like it was the only thing keeping their heart beating.
If Silas had been more attentive he may have been puzzled at where the child's food had gone; not just the pig-in-a-blanket but also the stick it had been skewered on had disappeared. But his mind was on other things and he did not think to question how food could disappear in the presence of a child. Silas tapped a finger against his knee, letting the silence linger. "This might be a strange question for me to ask and it's alright if you don't have an answer, but what do you want to do now?" The child tilted their head like a collie. "You've literally been under a rock the last few days so you probably don't know. Your foster family… they gave your things back to Child Services like they planned. Their names were kept out of the news, so we couldn't bring you back if we wanted to. I don't know if there's another foster family ready for you or…"
"… or if it's back to the group home," Frisk finished with a sigh, their shoulders sagging. They put away their phone with the grace of a trained pickpocket.
Silas craned his neck to look up at the stars. "It isn't fair, is it?" He did not check if he had gotten Frisk's attention. "You didn't ask to be abandoned. I doubt you hated all the foster homes you've been in. And the moment everyone knows you're back you'll be whisked away again. And from what I could tell none of the locals really stressed themselves out looking for you. Maybe someone will want to adopt you once your story goes public in hopes of getting their fifteen minutes of fame. Maybe they won't. Someone who adopts you for that isn't going to have your best interests in mind. It seems like… one thing happened that you had no control of and it defined the rest of your life."
The child scrunched up their face. Did he lose them? It had been too long since he was a child, he was never sure how much they could and could not understand. After a moment they were able to pick some bit of meaning out of his word jumble: "Am… am I really that pitiful?"
He hurriedly countered, "Pity isn't that bad. If pity means you can get something you need you shouldn't hesitate to exploit it. Pride is a luxury." One he himself indulged in, true, but that did not mean he would not give it up for the right reasons. "I suppose 'pity' would be one way to put it. But another part is, I know a bit about how little power children have. The way I see it, hearing your story and what you've done for these people, you deserve a little bit of a reward. So has anyone ever asked what youwant?" Frisk's head lowered, turned to look at something over their shoulder, then slowly from side to side to indicate a negative. "I'm asking now. What do you want to do, Frisk? If you could have any future, if you could go anywhere and do anything from here, what would you want your life to be like?"
Frisk wrung their hands and pulled their lips back in a not-smile for just a second before letting their face hang slack. It was impossible to tell where the child was looking, which made it difficult for him to tell what they were trying to work themselves up toward. "I…" they started. "I… told Toriel… I want to stay with them. I'd really like that, 'cause I've got nowhere else." They shook their head. "I'm a little bit stupid but I unnerstand more 'n people think. But…" They sunk even lower, their shoulders slumping in defeat. They knew as well as anyone how impossible that was.
An idea came to Silas just then. It was risky, belligerent, and could make him a lot of enemies. There was no guarantee the monsters or Frisk would be willing to go along with it. But it was a way. It could work, and none of them had the time to think of a better plan. He put his hand on the child's shoulder and gave it a squeeze. "I can't promise anything, but I'll see what I can do." Frisk did not respond. They must have heard some variation of those words a hundred times before and seen such vague assurances amount to nothing.
"So wait," Susan asked, her voice carrying outside the circle. "So if you've been underground all this time, how did you live? Where did you get food?" A very good question, Silas had to admit.
Asgore smiled. "We grew it by magic."
"Magic?" Marty asked. "What kind of magic are we talking, here? 'She turned me into a newt' magic, 'Fire, Fira, Firaga' magic, 'Watch me pull a rabbit out of a hat' magic?"
"Erm." Asgore stroked his beard. "None of those, I think. We have heard that magic has completely died out on the surface, so perhaps it is best if we start at the beginning. Magic is how monsters express ourselves; it's a part of who we are and how we see the world. Every monster is able to use a little magic, though advanced magic falls into a few distinct categories."
"Such as?" Silas prompted.
Toriel held out her hand, her eye twinkling mischievously. A tiny flame sprouted from the tip of her finger and she held it aloft for all to see. Susan "oooh!"ed appreciatively but Silas was more skeptical. It was possible to make a flame appear to come out of nowhere with a hidden lighter or gas line, though personally Silas would not have risked an open flame near all that fur. Toriel explained, "Fire magic is one of the basic types of magic. Most monsters are able to learn at least a little of it for light, heat, and cooking. Boss Monsters such as myself and Asgore, however… You shouldn't stare at this too closely," she warned just in time. The flame exploded upward, forming a pillar of flame six feet high and covering her entire hand at the base. The humans all swore and leaned backward, their pupils shrinking from the new source of light. Toriel held up a marshmallow in her other hand and plunged it directly into the heart of the flame for several seconds. Then she closed her hand to put out the fire, displaying the marshmallow which had been toasted a faint golden-brown. "I assure you my hand is completely unharmed. I can control the heat precisely, burning or cooking only what I wish no matter the strength of the flame. You could put your own hand inside and not feel a thing."
"So how hot can it get?" Chad asked suspiciously. "And how far away can you set these fires?"
"Hot enough to burn," Toriel confirmed as she stuck the marshmallow on the end of Marty's offered stick. "As for range… are you asking how effectively it can be used as a weapon? Magic is not very good at that, especially against humans. A monster can only use magic within their magic field. A magic field is what allows our bodies to maintain their shape, though it can be expanded over an area for a limited length of time without hurting us. Even a very strong practitioner can only extend their field a few body lengths. Furthermore, human bodies are very resistant to magic. We cannot change you into anything else, and to do permanent damage your soul would need to take a direct hit."
"Wait a sec," Marty said, putting his hands up to form a "T". "Soul?"
She evaluated her choices among the monsters. After a moment she nodded toward the skeleton. "Papyrus, would you like to demonstrate? Extend your field over me."
The skeleton hopped up from the ground and saluted smartly. "Right-o, Ms. Former Queen!"
Before anyone could ask about that form of address a white upside-down heart appeared in the middle of Toriel's chest and stole the humans' breath away. "This is my soul," Toriel explained. "Monsters and humans all have one, though human souls point in the opposite direction. As you can see, the soul appears when a monster expands their magic field and catches another person's body inside it. A magic field cannot be seen but it can be felt, so you will always have warning before any kind of magic is used on you. So please be at ease; you have little to fear from our magic." Chad's scowl did not budge, but his shoulders relaxed noticeably.
"I want it." Everyone turned to look as Susan. Her hands reached out and grasped at the air between her and Toriel and she whined, "I wanna do that. Teach me how to do magic, please! Or… don't tell me… humans can't?"
"I am given to understand the practice of magic and all its related knowledge long ago passed out of human hands. However, we know humans once had magic; there should be no reason they cannot have it again. So on the way here we discussed this and decided that will be our offer: all the information we have about magic, and our full cooperation to any and all attempts for humans to regain it. In return, all we ask is that we be allowed to live peacefully on the surface."
Silas picked apart the words, finding more meaning in the individual sentence fragments than Toriel probably intended. "Given to understand" - humans losing magic was told to the monsters by someone, not the result of their own research. "On the way here" - they did not have a plan, everything was being made up as they went along. "Allowed to live peacefully" - they had reason to believe they would not be welcomed with open arms. He considered the story the monsters told about being locked underground for generations. He thought about Frisk. "In that case, I want to offer my assistance." He gestured vaguely to indicate the area around him. "To ease you in to the surface world and make sure you receive a warm welcome from my fellow humans. I have little to offer besides my expertise and a place to stay while you hammer things out, but I offer them gladly."
Toriel clenched her paws into fists but was smiling. "If you're sure… I believe that would be a tremendous help. Thank you, Silas."
A large hand clapped Silas on the shoulder. "Buddy, pal, chum. Can we talk for a sec?" Chad's crushing grip on his shoulder made it clear this was no polite request. Silas held up an index finger to Toriel, indicating 'give us a minute' and stood. Marty and Susan followed Silas and Chad away from the fire. They were just barely out of earshot before Chad leaned deep into Silas' personal space to whisper through clenched teeth, "What the hell do you think you're doing?!"
"Offering help to people in need," he responded coolly. "Is that a problem?"
The question seemed to take Chad aback. The fire in his eyes momentarily faltered as he tried to explain, "All we have to go on is their word. Have you really thought about their story? A magic barrier locking them underground, magic, you really buy all that?"
Susan lifted up her shoulders in a helpless shrug but her eyes were alight. "It's so outlandish it has to be true. Truth is stranger than fiction, right? I think they're awesome, you're awesome, everything about this is awesome! I am totally on board!"
Marty's eyes swung on a pendulum from Susan to Chad and back again. Finally he shrugged. "You know what? The hell with it, count me in. This sounds a lot more interesting than a campout anyway." If Susan was hurt at her camping idea being swept aside so easily the thrill of helping a new species integrate with humanity more than washed it away.
Chad scowled on seeing he was outnumbered. "So what's your plan, anyway?"
"Hard to say without knowing what we're working with. One area in particular they need help with is the kid. Frisk wants to stay with them and I think I know a way to make it happen. Can I count on you to get a few things done for me?"
Chad crossed his arms. "Why? What are you planning?"
Silas straightened himself, attempting to project a confidence and decisiveness he did not truly feel. "I plan on becoming a foster parent for Frisk."
All three of his friends sucked in air and leaned back. "Jesus," was all Chad said as he wiped his face with his hand.
"No really, it's perfect. You saw the same news reports, right? They're a foundling, bounced around from one home to another. Supposedly they attacked another kid in their class but look at them: they've barely made a peep since they showed up. They want to stay with the monsters, but without help that won't happen. So I take over as their foster parent. The government is too overworked as it is to care about the details as long as they aren't being abused, and after this stunt of theirs no one is going to try to adopt them before we can get the monsters' legal situation sorted out. Then the monsters adopt them and everyone gets a happy ending. It's the right thing to do." Saying it out loud convinced him it was.
Marty whistled. "Not for nothing, but I thought you hated kids."
Silas considered that. Was that the impression he gave off? "I don't think I can have a kid myself and wouldn't even if I could, but I don't have anything against children in general or Frisk in particular. They aren't a bad kid. But the system is failing them. I happen to have the resources and ingenuity to help them, so I will."
"And it's just that simple for you, huh?" Chad rubbed the back of his head and stared into the darkness. "Alright, alright, we'll get them set up at your place in the morning. We should probably be out of here before they do the morning check, we only paid for four people and now we've got ten. Besides, our food reserves are completely spent."
Silas nodded. "Good call. We'll need to get another car, probably a van or sport utility vehicle. Asgore isn't going to fit comfortably in anything but we'll need something large for him to fit at all. That means we should all start winding down and get some sleep."
Once everyone had gotten settled down the night passed uneventfully. The monsters elected to sleep under the stars, and Marty joined them after giving up his pup tent to Frisk. Silas could not really blame them; after so long without seeing the open sky they would not be in any hurry to say goodbye to it again. After only five hours of sleep Silas was awakened when Chad shook his tent. The two of them had to go all the way to the airport to rent a car so early in the morning, so it was almost dawn by the time they returned. From there they broke camp, a speedy task with so many hands to help, and were gone before the campgrounds opened for the day. Their deposit was lost, but that was the way it had to be.
Cities and towns in New Hampshire were generally not designed by a planner or committee; early settlers staked their claims where they felt like it and barring massive fires the same topography persisted through generations. The result was a mish-mash of curvy streets, haphazard zoning, contrivances like the jug handle and the rotary to put too many cars on too-thin roads, and a hundred other absurdities which would make a cartographer throw up their hands. Trees grew in a dense forest on each side of the road. Driveways cut into the woods, serving as lifelines to the houses set twenty or thirty feet back from the street. Even though it was a residential area it would not be possible to look through the foliage and see any of your neighbors from within one of these homes. The leaves were a couple weeks from their peak but still plenty impressive, and with warm days and crisp cool nights the color of the leaves popped. The trees were a rich tapestry of deep reds and vibrant yellows and a range of all the oranges in between. Asgore started weeping at the sight of them, while Alphys took photos with her cell phone and Undyne simply gaped with an open mouthed grin. "It's like the trees are exploding," she said in awe.
"They're really something, aren't they?" Silas grinned despite himself. "I picked a good time to come back to New England. They haven't peaked yet, but they will soon. We have only a month and a half or so left of this. Pretty soon the leaves will fall off and then the trees will be a lot less interesting to look at."
"Oh!" Susan added. "But then we get snow and ice storms in winter. They're beautiful too, like a landscape from another world!"
"No kidding!" Undyne said, marveling. "Ice storms! Sounds dangerous. Man, I think I am really going to like it here!" Alphys made a quiet distressed sound. Was she cold blooded? She was a lizard, but… Silas put the question aside. It would be dangerous to make any assumptions about their biology.
Asgore wiped his eyes. "I… had forgotten how much I missed this. The trees, the colors, the air. To think, I had given up on ever seeing this again."
Silas blinked. "How long did you say you were trapped underground for?"
"A thousand years, give or take. We stopped keeping exact count some time ago."
So why did he sound like he was remembering a personal memory? The implication was too horrible to contemplate. Instead he focused on the road as they broke the treeline and faced the city proper. A sea of one-story buildings rose and crested like ocean waves frozen in mid-swell, following the natural contour of the hills. In the distance one could see the skyscrapers of the central business district, rising high above the trees and stores in their shadows. And further still on the plateaus one could see the yellow fields of the golden flowers.
Perhaps Silas should have been proud. This was his hometown after all and he was showing guests around. He felt it would have been appropriate to present it in grandiose terms. Weymouth! The city that tea built! But despite living here for the first 18 years of his life he held no special feelings, positive or negative, for this place. Weymouth was not large enough to have its own identity like Boston or New York, but it was too large to get away with describing it as "a simple New England town". Something should have been said, but nothing could be said. Silas simply continued driving, allowing the city to speak for itself.
Sans lay on his bed, forearm over his eyes. His body sunk into a depression formed by leaving a boulder of dirty laundry on his bed for weeks. A number of papers were strewn about him on the bed. He had not moved in… would it have been three hours now? Maybe four. Or maybe negative forty? He was unsure how one would even track that or whether there was a point. Probably not.
He picked up one of the papers and held it over his head to read it. The papers showed what appeared to be line graphs, each with a number of lines which branched off at several points. These branches would continue on for a time before the line would loop back around to return to the point of separation. Sans likened it the journey of a traveler who, shortly after realizing they had taken a wrong turn at a fork in the road, doubled back to continue down the other path. There were only a handful of people who could make any sense out of what these papers showed and he could count the number of people who fully understood it on one finger. It was a readout of the time-space continuum, an abstract representation of every possibility. At this level of detail he could only see the direction and magnitude of each individual timeline, not what they contained or what happened within them. He knew better than to try looking any closer. Wing Din Gaster had shown him the dangers of uncorking that particular genie's bottle. Preceding these paths was always something much more concerning: a single instant in time where a timeline, very far along, would zip all the way back instead of to the most recent branching point. From these points not one or two but several different pathways poked out from that single moment, most leading to those branches but a single one continuing farther and farther along, unimpeded and unstoppable until the next 'nexus point' as he called them. The earliest instance of these gnarled paths occurred about 27 years ago, more or less, and the most recent one was three days ago. He theorized each one to be the arrival of a new human to the underground, with two key exceptions. The first was that this phenomenon did not occur with Chara; whatever power allowed humans to travel through time Chara was the only one who either never had it or never used it. The second exception was about six months ago, where a new nexus formed but with no human to cause it. Was it a human who somehow got lost or blended in? Or did it have something to do with that flower that showed up at the barrier room?
He flicked the paper over to the side. Too much to think about. He grabbed at another sheet, the same one he always came back to lately. He looked over the printout again and again, each time willing it to show him something different. The sheet he was looking at was a complete mess of lines and loops, hundreds of pathways jutting out from a single instant in time. This nexus was three days ago, about the time he estimated Frisk arrived in the Underground. A few things stood out that was different from the others. There was one timeline which ended abruptly. It did not jump backward or loop or trail off, it simply ended. By his reckoning this would have happened yesterday; not this timeline, then. He did not have to think about what it meant, which was good because it gave him the willies. There was another which stretched on and on, all the way to the edge of perception. The one way out. In between were hundreds if not thousands of timelines which looped back to the nexus point, and of those nearly all of them were completed after the destruction of the barrier. Meaning the controller of the timeline, which he now knew was Frisk, decided to return to the point where they fell after having freed the monsters. And then there was the final realization, the one which had made him turn on his heel and walk right back underground: of these timelines, more than half looped back after a mere three days.
He was not very good at calculating odds and percentages, but from his way of thinking the chances he was in that one lone escape timeline were very small and the chances he was in one of the ones which wouldn't last a week were very high. He double-checked the figures to confirm something. In just the last ten minutes he had been pondering all this, the world had passed through forty three jumps backward.
He crumpled the paper into a ball and hurled it across the room, not even caring enough to see whether it made it into the wastebasket (it did not, falling a half a foot short). At any moment, all of this would be gone. He would be in this room, the barrier would be back in place, and no one would have ever heard of Frisk. He had tested ways to retain his memories through the last nexus, but he failed. No matter what he was only able to remember the barest ghostly fragments of an alternate history, vague recollections that he had been somewhere or seen something before. He had not gotten that with Frisk, which suggested this timeline was the first. Someday, somehow, it was all going to be reset. Everyone would be back underground without any memory of it.
Why? What was the kid hoping to find? Part of him wanted to wrap his phalanges around Frisk's throat and squeeze until answers came shooting out their mouth, but for all he knew that was a trigger for starting over. The more he struggled to find some way of stopping this the closer the noose tightened. Any potential action or lack of action could be the trigger that ended everything. It was like trying to find your way through a maze, except every time you took a wrong turn you had to start over without any markers or memory of what path you took, only the knowledge that countless other yous in countless times and places had failed to navigate the maze properly. So he did what he always did: nothing. If either action or inaction was wrong, why struggle so hard? Better to just give up.
It would be easier if he could talk to those kids honestly. Lay everything out, every point of data and every wacky theory and hypothesis he had made since the sixth human first alerted him and Dr. Gaster to the existence of the anomalies. Maybe, if they combined their knowledge-
A rift in time and space. Red eyes. A joyless smile. 963.
- no, he could not do that. He could never trust Frisk, not fully, not ever. But if that was the case, then what could he do?
He could feel his last point of HoPe flickering. Go away. Go away you vile thing! If he could just let it drop, if he could just Fall Down, it would be so much easier. But that decision was out of his hands, wasn't it? The last decision he would ever make was to believe Frisk meant well. He still did not know why he did it; all these resets proved the kid could not be trusted, and that was before taking the accident into account. But he had a promise to keep, and the kid asked for his support, and that was that. He was too damn soft.
Sans rolled over and closed his eyes. Two more days. If whatever caused Frisk to reset could hold off for two days, if he got through the worst of the series of resets, then maybe he could trust this timeline enough to leave the Underground.
