"As soon as possible" ended up being "right now," since Sans was gone and out the door as soon as he'd safely stored Gaster's book and fifth entry in your phone's dimensional box. He only stopped long enough to send a quick text to Alphys, who must've texted you sometime during the whole fiasco with the humans. She'd asked if he was planning on coming to the lab today, and he responded in the negative. He had more ambitious plans for the afternoon than being Alphys' assistant, it seemed.

You gonna tell me where you plan on finding these entries, sparky? Sans snorted at your comment, not bothering to close the barn door as he left. There was nothing in there worth protecting anymore.

"I'm goin' back to the basement. It's the only place I know of that isn't always affected by resets." In your mind's eye, you saw a flash of the stack of pictures in the drawer, which seemed to persist no matter how many resets occurred. The strangeness of that was not lost on you. "Something must've happened there to make it act like that. Maybe there's more clues Gaster left behind in there."

That did bring up an interesting question; why were all of these journal entries just scattered around? The way they were formatted suggested that they were initially written down in an organized, chronological manner, so why were they strewn all over the place? After all, people didn't usually write their diary entries on the backs of pictures and important blueprints.

Sans didn't have patience for your rhetorical questions; he'd had years to think about it himself and still hadn't come up with a good answer in all that time. You certainly weren't going to think of anything revolutionary in the time it took him to hop through a few shortcuts.

Getting to Snowdin took a little longer than usual, since Sans was forced to take an extra shortcut to the house and then walk all the way up the road to the Underground's exit. But luckily, there were no distractions along the way. The camp was dead, as it was the middle of the day and everyone was off doing their own thing. Even Endogeny wasn't around to greet you as you passed, though you couldn't imagine where they had gone without you.

Your own paranoia prompted Sans to look over his shoulder at the Northwest guard tower before disappearing into the Underground. It was too far away to make out any details, but you were certain there was a human up there, watching you. What were they thinking right now? Did they fear you? Hate you?

Well, there was nothing to be done about it, regardless. You didn't have much time to worry about it before you were in the basement again, watching as Sans rifled through the photographs for the millionth time. You privately doubted he would find anything new in any of them and, lo and behold, he didn't.

Staring at those pictures isn't gonna get you anywhere. You need to look somewhere you've never looked before. Go at it with fresh eyes. Sans threw up his hands, exasperated.

"Alright, backseat driver, where do you think we should look?" He asked, begrudgingly. You thought for a moment, the body's eyes drifting unconsciously toward the machine in the corner.

"Okay, okay… jeeze, you've got some kind of fascination with this thing, huh?" Sans teased as he shuffled over to the hunk of metal, smoothing a hand over the top, which he'd never been able to reach when he was in his normal body.

It's a time machine. It's cool. You felt some kind of nerdy, childish glee just looking at it. Despite having been in this basement twice before, you'd never gotten a chance to really examine it. It looked pretty beat up, but you could at least tell there was an interior and an exterior, with the exterior being a mess of wires and tubes and the interior containing a complicated system of knobs, buttons, and levers. You kind of wanted to push some of the buttons, but felt that nothing much would happen even if you did. The whole machine looked to be in rough shape, with several of the parts containing big cracks and the door hanging off of its hinges.

"Your computer's a more functional time machine than this hunk of metal." Sans said with a hint of bitterness as he nudged the base of the machine with his foot. He was right, you supposed, but the machine still looked much more badass than your laptop. Sans' chest rumbled with incredulous laughter as he listened into your thoughts. "Well, uh, I don't think we'll find much here, either. I know this thing like the back of my hand." You hummed and thought for a moment.

What about the top? Sans raised his brows. He knew every inch of this machine, except for the top. He simply hadn't thought it important, since he'd studied the blueprints and knew that all of the functionality of the time machine was either on the sides or under an access panel in the floor. There was only about a foot of space between the top of the machine and the ceiling, but, when Sans obliged you and peered into it, he saw that there was an odd-looking, metal hatch right in the center.

"No way." He reached back there and pulled up the hatch. Had either of you been in your proper bodies, you wouldn't have been able to reach it. But, as it was, Sans' arms were plenty long enough to open the hatch and root around inside. It seemed to be some kind of small storage area, which Sans was sure was not on any of the blueprints. He felt something flat sitting in there, and pulled it out from its hiding spot.

It was a floppy disk, sitting in a cheap, plastic sleeve. There was no label, or anything really to identify it. But it had to have been important if it was tucked in some secret compartment of the time machine.

Papyrus' computer. We could pop it in there. You suggested helpfully. Your own tiny laptop didn't even have a CD player, let alone a floppy disk drive, so you'd have to find some other way to see its contents. You remembered Papyrus' computer running Windows 2000, so if it was manufactured around that time, there was a chance it still had a way to read floppy disks.

"If he even still has that thing in this timeline. And if he didn't take it to the new house with him." Sans pointed out, but, despite his doubts, he was already heading up the basement stairs.

Sans knocked on the front door hesitantly. He didn't think Papyrus would be there; you were fairly certain he was at the lab with Toriel and Alphys. But it didn't hurt to check, anyway. Sans gave his brother plenty of time to answer the door before turning the knob himself, only to find it was locked. He shouldn't have been surprised, but it made his heart ache a little, anyway. He didn't have a key, which was just another reminder that he didn't belong here anymore.

Now who's forgetting he can teleport? You teased, but your tone was slightly cautious. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.

"I didn't forget." Sans scoffed before effortlessly opening up a shortcut to his own living room. He tried not to look around too much as he marched straight for the stairs, but he couldn't help but to notice that things looked just a little different. There was no dirty sock, no pet rock, and no joke quantum physics book. The place just had a cleaner feel overall, but otherwise it looked about how he remembered it. At least all of the shortcuts were still in the exact same places - one of the few things that was guaranteed to never change, no matter what happened in each timeline. He took his favorite shortcut in the whole house, which led from the bottom of the stairs to the top, and opened up Papyrus' bedroom door while steadfastly ignoring his own. The last thing he wanted was to see what Paps had done with his room in his absence.

He couldn't avoid seeing his brother's room, however. It looked mostly the same, though, interestingly, there was an awful lot of pirate-themed paraphernalia decorating the walls and the bookshelf. Many of his action figures were also pirates, and he even had a little model ship sitting on the table. Why was Papyrus suddenly so obsessed with pirates now that Sans wasn't around? Had he unknowingly squashed his brother's interest in them? He wracked his memory, trying to think of a time when Papyrus had even mentioned pirates. Did he even know what they were?

Don't overthink it, Sans. You warned him, Undyne did find him that pirate flag in your timeline… maybe this new interest is just a side-effect of hanging out with her more often. It did make sense that Undyne might like pirates, what with the eyepatch and the obsession with swords. And Papyrus idolized her, even in this version of events where they grew up together. Or maybe there was a different reason… the point was, it didn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.

What was more heartbreaking to you was the complete lack of children's books, which used to hold pride of place on Papyrus' bookshelf. The reason for this change was more obvious; why would he need bedtime stories when there was no one around to read them to him? But Sans hadn't noticed that yet, distracted as he was with the pirate thing. You tried very hard not to think about it, so he never would.

Luckily, one thing that hadn't changed was the computer sitting in the corner of Papyrus' room. And, even more fortunate, it had a floppy disk drive. Sans knew very little about computers, so he let you take the reins as you booted up the machine and popped the rectangular disk in, feeling a little nostalgic since the last time you'd used a floppy disk was when you were a kid. You waited patiently as the floppy disk drive made a godawful noise, before it quieted down and you were able to pull up the files on the computer.

The first thing you noticed were a lot of corrupted files. Their names were just nonsensical letters and symbols, and, when you tried to open them, the computer wasn't having it. You guessed they'd been text files at some point, simply because a floppy disk didn't have the memory space to hold much else other than that. But otherwise, you had no clue what could've been on them. This frustrated Sans, who asked,

Can't you bring them back?

"I really don't think so." You didn't know much about restoring corrupted files, but you had the feeling that these were too far gone.

There was, however, one file that didn't look corrupt. It was simply titled "3." Feeling a tingling sense of trepidation, you double clicked it open. You didn't bother changing the font from wingdings to something more sensible, since Sans was already reading it out to you.

"ENTRY NUMBER THREE

IT DID NOT WORK
THE TIME MACHINE COULD NOT TAKE ME FAR ENOUGH
IT COULD ONLY BRING ME BACK TO THE CREATION OF THE BARRIER
BEFORE MALFUNCTIONING

THIS WAS NOT BY MY OWN ERROR
I KNOW I BUILT IT PERFECTLY

IT SEEMS
THAT THE CREATION OF THE BARRIER
MARKS THE BEGINNING OF TIME ITSELF

THE HUMANS DID NOT TRAP US UNDERGROUND
THEY TRAPPED US IN AN ENTIRELY NEW UNIVERSE
IT IS THE ONLY EXPLANATION
THIS IS…

…
I DO NOT KNOW HOW TO FIX THIS
I DO NOT THINK I CAN FIX THIS

I HAVE FAILED AGAIN"

Your eyes roved over the entry, again and again. It was by far the longest one so far, but it didn't really tell you anything you didn't already know.

What do you mean?! Gaster knew about the Underground being in another universe! He figured it out! I'd say that's pretty damn important. Sans was uncharacteristically excited, but you didn't really understand why. You didn't mean to be a downer, but…

"But we already knew about that. The game... Undertale... was the alternate universe he was talking about. So, yeah, good for Gaster for working that out, but it's kind of a moot point now." As you talked, you closed the file and popped the floppy disk back out of the computer.

Okay, well… at least we found an entry, right? You slipped the disk back into its plastic sleeve and sighed. Hey, what's your problem? This is a good thing! The way Sans said it had you bristling. It took you a moment to figure it out, but eventually you were able to pinpoint what was bothering you about the situation.

"It's just… I mean, we're only finding the early entries, so far. We know there's at least seventeen, and we've only found two through five. And they're already getting kind of depressing… I just don't like the direction this is going." There was a flash of anger from Sans.

Look, kid, I've been drivin' myself crazy trying to figure this shit out foryears. I dunno why we're suddenly finding all of these entries now, but there's no way in hell I'm gonna stop just because it's starting to look like this might not have a happy ending. You grunted and scuffed your foot on the carpet. You knew that you didn't really have any right to discourage Sans from investigating this; after all, he was involved in it somehow… those pictures in the basement proved that. But you had a bad, gut feeling about it.

Sans' tone was softer when he continued, And you said it yourself… Gaster and I are probably related. So, uh, if he's family, and something bad happened to him… I gotta know. Maybe I can help him, somehow. You were quiet for a moment, before your face set into a determined line.

"We." You grunted, standing up as straight as you could in the middle of Papyrus' abandoned, pirate-themed room. Sans seemed confused, so you elaborated, "We're gonna help him. You're not going to do this alone anymore… and not just because we're stuck in the same body. Even if we get separated before we figure all this out, I still want to help you." Even though you felt this could only end badly, even if Sans was doomed to just make himself more miserable by pursuing this… well, you weren't going to let him be miserable alone. You decided that, if this was so important to Sans, then it was important to you, too.

Sans was oddly touched by your declaration. You hadn't meant to make this into some kind of chick-flick moment, but it was quickly turning into just that. You coughed and felt yourself blush.

"Um, anyway… we should probably get out of Papyrus' room." It took you a second to realize that you were the one in control, so if you wanted to leave, you could just do it yourself. You turned around abruptly and marched out the door, getting more flustered the longer Sans stayed silent. Somehow, you nearly tripped over the banister on the way out. "Okay… you can stop now." You felt Sans growing more amused the more awkward you became. Still, he said nothing, obviously doing it on purpose now. "Oh my god, just say something so that I know you're not dead!"

Something. You facepalmed yourself, pulling up your hood self-consciously as you descended the stairs.

"I hate you."

No, you don't, kid.