Monster Year 201[X] AE (After Exploration)
Date: 3rd of Taurus
Subject: Human Exam #1
Today marks the day I finally get to study the human a little, aside from the injury healing I had to perform.
The human appears to be slightly nervous, yet still has that bright glimmer of sorts in her eyes. She came in, scrawling notes in a little red notebook. She spoke in the human language of "French." Very tight-lipped. However, she did open up a little bit later. She wore ceremonial gowns when she first fell. Perhaps due to a ritual, was my first guess. Later questions debunked this postulate.
Today, however, she wore pants and a long-sleeved, striped shirt. Very hardy and rational clothing, suitable for any climate, provided modifications were performance on the spot. Yesterday's medical examination yielded a result that she was a very healthy child on the surface.
When she walked in, she quietly complimented the devices I used and how they worked, taking special interest in the light.
Of course she would. While we experimented with electricity, my lab assistants discovered that coiling a thin filament of wire and running electricity through it created light. The filament burned in many trials, but when we put the filament in a magically-suctioned vacuum bulb, the filament simply glowed. Truly a feat of science.
In any case, I promised to explain to her after the medical exam. She cursed at me in French. Seems she does not like information being withheld. I cannot blame her; I was the same in my youth.
I began by asking her for name, although I already knew. She said her name was Chara, meaning "Joy" in Greek. Wasn't there a human expression that had to do with Greek? There most likely was many. From what I could deduce from discarded manuscripts, the Greeks were quite the artistic bunch. I had a small library of their manuscripts.
I knew a little bit of French, I must say. So I asked her what languages she knew. She replied with English, Greek, Latin, and Italian, although she was most comfortable with her birth tongue of French. Both of us knowing English at a good level, I decided to use this language to speak with her. I explained that I was going to ask her a series of questions, that she could answer, or skip if she was uncomfortable. She agreed.
There were many questions I processed through. An echo transcript has been attached.
At the very end, I was about to pack up and send her back home, but she stopped me. She said I would tell her how the light worked.
For the first time in a while that didn't have a scientific breakthrough attached to it, I smiled and explained. And she understood! A child, at the young age of ten, could comprehend in about ten minutes of explanation something that took the King an hour! And she asked no questions, and did not display a single hint of confusion!
On a side note, she mentioned a date the day she fell: December 21, 1493 After Death. Confused by this, I asked her the meaning of the date (her birthday) what the current date was amongst humans, and showed her a monster calendar. She quickly and sketched a human-to-monster-calendar conversion table. Will ask the print shop to make a calendar based off of this.
Append: Human also left notebook with me.
Attached Transcript: Q&A with patient Chara Dreemurr
Transcript recorded by Sans Gaster, lab assistant on-duty as of Ar 03 201[X] AE
[Door opening]
G: Ah.
C: ...Salutations , Docteur. (Greetings, Doctor.)
G: Maintenant, maintenant, il n'y a pas besoin de manières comme ça...fermer la porte, allez-vous? (Now, now, there's no need for mannerisms like that...close the door, will you?)
[Door closing]
G: Parlez-vous anglais? (Do you speak English?)
C: ...Yes. Not as well as French, however.
G: We will have to make do, I suppose. My French is lackluster compared to my English. Suzy, mind getting our guest some snacks?
C: Snacks?
G: Things you would most likely enjoy. Tea. Cookies. A few candies. Some dried jerky. Nuts, as well.
[Plate on table]
G: Thank you, Suzy. I see you've taken interest in the light fixture.
C: Yes, it's very...interesting. How is it emitting light? There's nothing burning.
G: Do you wish for it to be explained?
C: Yes.
G: That, I will unfortunately have to save for afterwards.
C: Hmph. [quiet muttering, French in origin]
G: We must get this examination underway?
C: I see no medical instruments. Are you going to examine me with your "magic?"
G: Ah, that may be for a later date. And if I do so, it will be non-intrusive. Today is simply a series of questions. You may answer the question, or if you express discomfort towards the question, you may skip it. Although I would prefer if you answered a good few of them, I understand if I may have touched a sore point with a question, and you would prefer to skip it.
C: Running away from the painful truth simply leads to ignorance. And ignorance leads to conflict.
G: I cannot deny that. Let us begin.
[paper rustling]
G: So, what is your name?
C: Chara. It means "Joy" in Greek.
G: And surname?
C: Dreemurr.
G: No, I mean the one you had on the surface, if you had one.
C: I do not care for my family.
G: You wish to, ah, escape them?
C: No. My family is dead. All of them. Though, if I used my surname, it would be "Donadieu."
[silence]
G: I see. That gown you wore when you first fell: why did you fall? Was it a ceremony?
C: My church girl robes? No, there was no ceremony. I fell because I wanted to escape.
G: I thought you said you had no family to escape from.
C: I wished to escape from my people. You monsters do not know the true monsters on the surface. I promise they are not as kind as you all have been.
G: Ah. Okay. Do you wish to elaborate?
C: ...No.
G: So, tell me about your time keeping system. Is it similar to ours?
C: You measure the month by the zodiac. We measure it by the moon, since we can see it.
G: That is true. We measure the month by the zodiac because our magic can sense the current zodiac month. When you were brought here after you fell for injury treatment, you mentioned a "December 21."
C: Yes. That is the day I was born. We measure months by the moon and years by the stars, starting from the death of a religious figure.
G: Could you...perhaps draw your calendar?
[rustling of paper and pencil]
C: This writing utensil. What is it? Neither pen nor charcoal. The substance is too shiny.
G: Graphite. We had to save our wood for building houses, so we needed to adapt.
C: I assume the rubber cleans mistakes?
G: Yes.
[sketching]
G: Ah. Thank you.
C: I have also marked down important human holidays. If you could tell me today's date, I could possibly make a human-monster conversion table by tomorrow.
G: That is not necessary. I can have the print shop do it for you.
C: Print shop? Ah-printing press. Never mind. Is there more questions?
G: How are the humans doing right now? Any new leaders that have come to prominence, or of the sort?
C: Ha. Currently the world's as broken as a stained-glass mirror. Every fief squabbling for land, constant wars. All of them pledge Christian, but all of them anything but.
G: Fief? Christian?
C: The former is a keep, of sorts, where peasants farm and labor while the nobles do as they please. Terrible system, yet no one listens to a decent thinker with better ideas. They get laughed off too quickly. The latter is a religion that came into prominence...1,493 years ago. We measure years based after the founding. The religion itself is fine. The issue is that everyone listens to what they want to hear and ignores what they don't. If you ever find a book called the "Bible," that is what the religious text is.
G: I do believe I have one of those. Seemed like an interesting read, although work had always kept me from reading it.
C: I suggest you read it multiple times. Every read gives into new insights. More questions?
G: Yes. Is there any importance with that red booklet?
C: Did you look inside of it?
G: Will you answer my question if I answer yours?
C: Yes.
G: I did not look inside.
C: This is my life's work, not that I have had much of one up until now. It can be considered one of human societies' taboo books.
G: Why?
C: The ideas inside of it. Every page is pure taboo in human society, although it tells nothing but what I have perceived as truths. This alone could have earned me a voyage down Ebott.
G: I am...interested in this, to say the least.
C: You are a researcher, no? It is full of theorems, formulas, and philosophies I have derived from my own studies. In human society, a child is seen as a true inferior. And a person with red eyes is seen as somebody possibly influenced by the devil. If anyone knew about this booklet other than the ones I trust, I would be flagged as a heretic and witch, and burned.
[chair scooting]
G: Red eyes...are they normal in humans?
C: No.
G: Has anyone ever had a glimpse into that booklet?
C: Only one other human.
G: So you trust me?
C: You appear more curious and inquisitive than threatening. And I am sure your mind is open enough to the ideas inside.
[shuffling of heavy book]
C: Read it. Maybe. I don't mind if you do not. Are there any more questions?
G: No.
C: You have not explained to me how the lamp works.
G: Ah, you still hold me to that. Sans, turn off the recording device, will you?
-End of Transcript-
Monster Year 201[X] AD (After Defeat)
Date: 5th of Taurus
Subject: The Red Notebook
Chara did not lie. These ideas truly are quite...radical, even to me. I shudder to think how humanity would react, if they are so as Chara had described them. And in such vivid detail!
As a start, humans have been described as simple herds, following logic of higher-ups. The higher-ups, however, are corrupt and bend people to what they want, through propaganda and force. This idea, this rule through fear, ignorance, and oppression...the lacking of knowledge, denial of truth, to the point where even their teachers are illiterates who are clueless to what they teach. And nobility will form gangs, paying their gangs with bread. Just bread! Not even coin of any sort, just a meal! Something so plentiful in the Underground, the first piece of infrastructure the King set up, was the distribution of food.
Perhaps it was because of the cruel taxes Chara described, to fund...what? Lavish luxury was what Chara stated. Not even war, nor research. Just luxury. Swans, plump swans, with a death penalty if even a single feather of theirs was touched. Fountains so plentiful, if all of them were on, the water reserves would be drained in mere seconds.
Greed. Greed pride, and gluttony, overwhelmingly detailed in just the first ten pages! Chara did make a concession that she, being a member and servant, although a spiteful one, of the church. She also makes a concession that truly, this concept the church is built around is innately good, but humanity has twisted it so far that it appears evil. Yet, the fact that she was a member of the church, well fed, well clothed, and well cared for, did not save her from hatred. In fact, she was caught in the crossfire of it. The people hated her for being so well-groomed, to the extent that she could not walk the streets and breathe with even a slight sigh of relief if she did not carry that knife, even if she did occasionally sneak out pieces of her own meal to feed the masses. Her own caretakers treated her as scum, because she was an orphan and had red eyes. Despised by the majority, and despised by the powerful. She was always the one assigned to the most undesirable of tasks, despite having an unsuitable physique for such tasks. And, judging from the entries, she slowly, slowly grew more spiteful, not of herself, but of the world around her.
She did have her own relaxation time, and during that time she would delve into the sciences and arts. A section of the notebook is entirely devoted to accounting, where she would sell sketches and small scientific concoctions to people. Her studies in science are rudimentary at best, but it appears that most researchers of her time do not know any better. She continuously writes that she has "disproven" so-and-so's theory on basic physics misconceptions anyone should understand.
I am considering letting her study alongside us in the laboratory. I may be able to convince Toriel to let her do so.
As for this red notebook…I will try to write my thoughts about it down. I must write it all down. Perhaps then I will be able to piece together something from it. The psychoanalysis from this alone is…grim, at best. At its worst is a form of madness. But, as Chara described in the notebook as well, who is the insane one? Was it her, who both created this book that which disproves many misconceptions that humans seemed to have, and yet has ideas so hard to digest and so queer that I have to question her sanity, or is it the humans, the "normal" people who have these irrational fears? I fear that both are insane, both succumbed to a form of madness.
I need to stop. Yet, the red notebook, so alluring, so…interesting. I want to study it more. No. I cannot. The paranoia from the red notebook is cutting into my very essence. Monsters are made of hopes and dreams and magic, and the ideas contained in the book are possibly creating a feedback effect. It draws in, yet my better judgement tells me to run. Run, give the notebook back, and never look at it again.
I must stop. I am tired. I must sleep…
Monster Year 201[X] AD (After Defeat)
Date: 6th of Taurus
Subject:
I spent all night awake.
This notebook. Its references, its ideas, theories, everything. All of its sciences are rudimentary. That much we know. Yet the philosophies, theologies, metaphysics, I cannot help but ponder them.
I not only read through the whole notebook, but all of its references as well. The Book of Revelations. Genesis. Plato, Socrates, every single man and woman's work Chara mentioned.
I am not tired. I have never felt more awake. I must pry more. More into these theories. More into everything. Curiosity over all my judgements and morals.
I must go now. There are tests to run, Barriers to research. Souls to examine. And maybe, I will pay Chara a visit. But not in this state. Now, I need to…
[Log entry appended by Suzy Kid. Reason: Doctor fell asleep on the recording machine. Many pages of o's. The Doctor has been put to bed rest. Sans, Papyrus, and I have been entrusted with leading his work today.]
Monster Year 201[X] AD (After Defeat)
Date: 6th of Taurus
Subject: Today's events, as transcribed by Suzy Kid
Put Doctor to sleep. He stayed asleep on the lobby couch for the rest of the day, muttering. It appears his mental state is even more precarious than normal.
Asgore came to visit with Chara. We told Asgore Gaster was up late at night researching. Let Chara poke around. She seemed to add up the fact that Gaster spent all night reading that red notebook, which was placed in the low threat public access quarantine room for worker safety, although Chara does not know that.
Tried making soul substitute. Only succeeded in soul flavor substitute. Tried it with coffee today in substitution of coffee creamer. I prefer creamer, the soul flavor was a bitter lemon mixed with coffee. Musing: Do souls even have flavors?
Low progress today. Chara also looked through many of our lab notes. Asgore and Toriel approved of her studying with us.
The Doctor is right. There certainly is something special about her.
