So far from home yet so close, an undertale fanfic

Frisk unzipped their sleeping bag tethered to a wall. It was going to take some time for them to get used to this wasn't it ?

They pushed themself forward very slightly, resulting in a linear movement of their body until they reached the floor thanks to the wonders of microgravity.

Whilst there were certainly unpleasant parts to this mission as a whole, the lack of gravity was certainly not one of them. Although they were now aged twenty-seven, Frisk still had a lot of fun floating around in an environment with nearly no gravitational forces. In many aspects, this long trip was like a dream come true.

What wasn't as fun however, were the physical exercices that they had to spend hours doing every day. As much as not having to deal with gravity was fun, the big downside was that their body would end up getting used to making nearly no effort to move around as they spent a long time in space. And from there, well, lets just say that it risked causing important disorders within their body. Especially for their muscles.

So in order to avoid that and stay active, intense exercice was the only option. It was a pretty strange type of exercising too, after all most of what people would consider exercising on Earth wouldn't work here.

Luckily, they still had a bit of time before this time of the day would come. For now, they floated towards what their companion refered to as the "vegetation space". Because it was a space for vegetation... located in space.

At least, Frisk was glad that Chara could still keep their sense of humor with hundred of thousands of kilometers separating them from the closest other human being.

This trip was going to be a very long one. Eight months long.

This also meant that they would have the need for eight months worth of food. Which meant more weight, and thus more fuel to use for the rocket. And the fuel itself had a weight, so even more fuel than that would have to be added to compensate. Short things short : This food problem caused a lot of issues and a lot of expenses. Also astronaut dehydrated food just kinda sucks.

This was why an alternate solution was put in place. Frisk grew their own food. In space. Surprisingly, that was actually possible, even if much trickier than on Earth. Not only did it cost and weigh less, but Frisk just liked healthy food generally speaking. They'd rather eat radishes than some bar containing just the vitamins they needed to survive or such.

They still wished they could eat Toriel's cooking though. But this wasn't possible. Not here.

Frisk missed their friends already. They had only been gone for a bit over a week but it felt like so long ago since they last saw them.

Their mind flooded with memories, Frisk couldn't help but to go to the back of ship, where they could look at the outer space behind them.

Every day that passed, the Earth was getting slightly smaller. It was a strange feeling. Knowing that everyone they ever knew, everything they ever lived through, all the happy and sad moments of their existence, and not just theirs, but that of all of humanity and monsterkind, it all fit on this one orb. An orb that sometime in the future, would be so far that they wouldn't even be able to distinguish its continents of with the naked eye. It would appear lost in the immense vastness of space. So insignificant compared to the gigantic emptiness of the universe.

It was... They didn't know how to describe this feeling. It was both sad and beautiful. Nostalgic and hopeful. Their world was only a fraction of everything that existed.

They had known all of this for a long time of course, but there was a massive difference between knowing how tiny Earth truly was in the grand scheme of things and actually seeing it for yourself. And they had the feeling that this sensation would only intensify as time passed and Earth shrunk more and more as they got closer and closer to the red planet.

Mars.

They were going to Mars.

Just a decade ago it would have felt like science fiction, and yet here it was. If everything went as it was planned, they would be the first person to set foot on another planet.

The way this had happened still felt unreal. It was so fast, too. Never had the training phase of an astronaut ever been so short. But well, Frisk was Frisk. The rules that applied to others didn't apply to them. This was as a matter of fact the reason they had been chosen in the first place.

Frisk hadn't originally intended on becoming an astronaut. Whilst many people trained for years to have the chance to qualify, merely 1% of them got the chance to be selected. Frisk on the other hand had actually been proposed the job on a silver platter.

Ever since the end of the space race, governments around the world mostly lost interest in manned space exploration. There were no more manned missions to the moon for over 60 years after the last one in the 70's. They simply considered they had other more important affairs to spend their money on.

It was only in the last few years that the public became interested in spatial conquest again. Not because of any geopolitical rivalry but rather because of a single person. A billionaire that decided to create his own spacial organisation with the single goal of making it to Mars within a seemingly unrealistically short delay.

The eight fallen human had back then paid attention to the progress that this project made. They always kinda had a liking for space stuff. But of course they were dealing with their own problems most of the time. Their role of ambassador caused them to be quite busy generally speaking.

Frisk had actually already turned into a pretty famous figure of their own, wether they wanted it or not. It wasn't every day that someone caused the liberation of an entire race and eventually later publicly admitted to having time travel abilities.

This last one in particular caused a massive fuss when the information was made public. For a week or two, it was like the entire world revolved around them. This period had been emotionally exhausting for a Frisk that was back then in their early teens.

Some people were amazed, some were horrified, some just didn't believe it, and many people practically begged them to cooperate with them so that their power could be analysed to further the cause of science. They caused national debates all around the planet.

After the initial shock though, most people ended up with a good opinion of Frisk. They guessed that being a charming child that already had a great public image after playing a key role in freeing monsterkind had likely helped a lot with that. If an older person unknown to the public had made this reveal instead, most people probably wouldn't have taken it as well as for them.

Well, not everyone had taken it well either...

There were some exceptions, not everybody liked Frisk. Notably part of those that expressed racist views against monsterkind, transphobes or religious extremists that believed the existence of a time traveller like Frisk was an insult to their gods.

Officially, there had been three failed attempts on Frisk's life throughout the years. (the first of which when they were only 15 !) The truth was that two of those attempts had actually been successful, but that the consequences had been erased through LOADING.

Still, Frisk kept a vivid memory of what it felt like to be shot several times until death ensued. It wasn't a pleasant feeling. Yet, it wasn't the worst death they had experienced so far.

Regardless, in the meantime, the billionaire's company actually managed to make pretty staggering progress over the next few years, making new advancements regularly until it had the public hooked as it kept insisting that it would take humanity of Mars in a matter of years.

However, despite how impressively quick the project advanced, it was still falling short of its incredibly ambitious schedule. Three years before the supposed deadline, they had reached a point where sending a ship with people on board was getting envisonable for the near future, but not quite doable yet.

There were multiple problems with their current progress. They had figured out how to deal with the problems that having humans living in such a ship long term would have, but they were unable of both making the ship efficient enough to actually transport humans on Mars and to make it be able to sustain the life of a crew of multiple people for months at the same time. Not to mention that even if they did manage to do that somehow, it wouldn't be possible for the ship to come back to earth after landing without adding a few more modules that would render the ship too inefficient to make it to Mars in the first place again. This meant that any astronaut that did participate would never be able to come back to Earth and would be condemned to die on Mars eventually.

Not to mention that there would have only been space for a single astronaut if they did cut corners enough to make the one way trip possible. Being alone in space for months on end unimaginably far from any other human being was a one way ticket to insanity. A human's mental health just wasn't able to withstand something like this. They would irreparably go nuts long before making it to the red planet and jeopardise the mission anyway.

These problems were all fixable, they were working on it, they knew that in 5-8 years, they could improve the efficiency enough to fix all of those issues and send a manned mission with multiple people on board that would be able to make it back to Earth afterwards.

But with only three years left before the deadline they had set up. They were screwed. The only thing that they could do was to delay the deadline by a good 5 years. It seemed that this was the only option after all, there was no way such a mission would be carried within the next three years without it ending in horrific failure.

Or so the public opinion thought had thought. But this story was about to be shaken up by a strange twist.

It was a Sunday afternoon, whilst Frisk was in vacation, that they got this phone call. A phone call from the billionaire himself. Frisk hadn't expected that at all, but what they expected even less was for him to skip most formalities and pretty much just ask them directly : "Do you want to be the first human on Mars ?"

At first, Frisk thought it was a joke. But he was totally serious. And after the two talked some more, Frisk came to understand the reasoning behind this proposal.

In the current state of things, there was no way a human could set foot on Mars before the deadline due to a number of factors.

But said factors didn't apply to Frisk. Thanks to their power.

Unlike anybody else, Frisk could go on a one way mission, and actually come back alive anyway.

Unlike anybody else, Frisk already felt like they were separated from the entire rest of the world by a giant psychological wall. They of all people could handle this voyage without losing their mind.

Unlike anybody else, they had nothing to fear. Not a failure of the mission, not even death.

Frisk was the only person in the entire world that had the potential to make a successful trip to Mars within the deadline.

All they had to do was to say yes.

And... How could they not ? With the guarantee through their SAVE power that nothing wrong could happen that they wouldn't be able to LOAD away, how could they not take this chance to be the first representant of their kind to walk on martian soil in any timeline ?

The foreign businessman would get a chance to fulfill the deadline after all and not lose face while Frisk would get a chance to live through the greatest odyssey in the history of mankind. Even in the worst case scenario where everything exploded with Frisk inside, they would just come back alive like nothing had happened and still having had gotten to go to space whilst the spaceship would be brought back intact on earth too before it even launched, leading to no major financial losses of the billionaire's side. It was an incredible deal. For both of them.

A few weeks later, the time to work out the plan in detail and to formalise everything, Frisk's participation in the space project was made public and the two of them were the center of the world again. A billionaire and a time traveller working together to achieve the greatest technological feat in human history. It sounded so made up, and yet it was real.

The one major issue was that Frisk was in no way trained to be an astronaut. Whilst they were in good shape physically, they had neither the skill nor the knowledge to do this. There was a reason as to why it normally took years and years of studying and training to be suitable for the job. Frisk did not do any of that.

But well, if they had three years to be there and that the trip took almost one, that left them two years. But time was relative, especially for Frisk. If necessary, what was two years for everyone else could for them be more than that.

Learning everything one needed to know to become an astronaut was very long and very complicated, even with a lot of money and ressources being dedicated purely to helping them get ready as quickly and efficiently as possible. However, they had a trick up their sleeve. If they had tons of books to read through and understand as well as people to answer their questions at all times. They could just SAVE before starting to work on it, spend the whole day doing that, then instead of sleeping, just LOAD and just keep going from where they had stopped.

The fact that their fatigue was wiped out as well meant that they were fresh and full of energy again every time they LOADED. This way, Frisk could read through, learn and memorize weeks worth of books in what to everyone else seemed like it was just a single day. They would obviously still eventually get sick of studying, but they could just spend the day relaxing instead, and then LOAD afterwards, still not having lost any time.

Of course, in practice, they did let time pass by regularly. But as far as the time they had to spend learning went, Frisk was capable of absorbing a lot of knowledge in a very short time.

One thing that they couldn't cheat however was the physical aspect of the training. In order to be fit physically to get sent to space, their body itself had to go through its own training with things such as learning to resist very intense G-forces that would normally make people faint in moments.

As much as the experience itself was something Frisk could obtain through LOADING, it wasn't the case for the training of their body. When Frisk LOADED, it also erased what their body went through. Keeping memories of having done it before didn't change much. This meant that exercices like this one were something Frisk would have to do regularly no matter what. Time travel sheningans wouldn't save them from this one.

These two years were a very intense time for them. For someone who didn't have much prior interest in it, having to be made ready to be sent to another planet within a pretty short delay was really stressful. Even for somebody who had virtually unlimited time at their disposal.

The thought of actually doing it was both exiting and utterly terrifying to Frisk. But that was an opportunity the likes of which they couldn't help but to see through to the end, no matter how it would play out, it would be a memory they'd cherish forever.

One year and one month before the deadline, Frisk's training was considered as complete, although they personally didn't quite feel ready. But to be truthful, they would never truly feel ready for something like this.

The launch day was scheduled in two weeks (as that would be the time of the year where the distance between Earth and Mars was the shortest), and it was all that the news could talk about. Millions and millions would surely be watching live transmissions of the launch on TV that day.

They were so scared... So scared but also so impatient.

A few days before the big day, Frisk spent the majority of their time saying goodbye to everybody they knew. They knew that they wouldn't see any of them again for a very long time. (Well, except for one person that is)

This goodbye was just as emotional for the others as it was for them. From their perspective, this would be the last time they would ever see Frisk in person in this iteration of the timeline. Even if they knew that in the next iteration, it would be like Frisk had never actually left them at all. They would also lose memory of the time where Frisk did leave but they would keep memories of this goodbye anyway which would surely feel strange to them.

When the day came, Frisk was awaited a few hours before the countdown in a sort of stage in drivable distance from the site. They felt like they were going to pass out when they noticed just how many cameras were fixed all around this place. TV channels must have paid so much money to be able to record this event.

Despite the fact that this was funded by a private entreprise, the president had come himself to shake Frisk's hand on camera. (It wasn't actually the first this had happened but the second. The first having being linked to their ambassador work) Considering the president hadn't been very popular recently, Frisk wouldn't be surprised if this act was more so he could benefit from Frisk's own popularity than anything else as their name was currently on the lips of millions if not billions of people. So much pressure on their shoulders...

The challenge ahead is immense, but you stay determined. A familar voice whispered to them in their mind.

They had only one thing left to do now. Under the eyes of countless people cheering them from behind their screens, Frisk SAVED.

FILE SAVED

Frisk gave an enthusiastic goodbye and waved their hand, which was addressed both to all of those watching them from the other side of their screens and to the Earth itself.

Frisk breathed slowly in and out. They were sitting (well, if you could still consider that sitting when they were attached this hard) in the cockpit, oriented towards the sky. There were around 20 minutes left before launch.

There was nothing for them to do but to wait, every second felt like it lasted a whole minute.

Frisk would be lying if they said that there hadn't been a few moments during these last 20 minutes where they seriously started reconsidering their choices or asking themself what the hell they were doing. And well, it wasn't totally unjustified. What they were doing was absolutely insane. But at this stage, insane was pretty much their middle name. And whenever it did happen, they could count on their friend to help them relax.

Calm down. Do not worry, you can do this. You are going to do great, you always do.

What truly got to Frisk weren't the words themselves but rather the very fact that they could feel Chara's presence radiating with compassion directed at their own. It was very comforting.

Frisk's eyes shot open when a loud robotic voice began a one minute countdown and their anxiousness came back ten times stronger.

Their heart rate increased even faster than the seconds were being counted down. By the time the last 20 were reached, they felt it pounding out of their chest. At this rate they would have a heart attack before getting to zero.

The entire room around suddenly began trembling as the engines were ignited for the incoming launch.

This was so much more stressful than the simulations.

Five.

Not being able to do anything else to help, the first fallen human pressed their consciousness closer to Frisk's as a sort of inner hug.

Four.

Frisk returned the favor.

Three.

They felt full of adrenalin. All of their senses were on very high alert.

Two.

Frisk swallowed their saliva.

One.

They braced themself for it.

Zero.

The sudden movement glued them against their seat even more than they already were, but Frisk knew that the speed would only be going up and the pressure on them would only increase in the following moments. It took a speed of around 11km/sec in order to escape the Earth's pull

As the rocket progressively accelerated and tore through the lower atmosphere, they were pressed by a force multiple times greater than the the gravity they were used to on Earth. They had to bear this force for a several minutes as the speed slowly ticked up. Mach 12... Mach 13... Mach 14...

15... 20... 25... 30...

It was only when they reached the frontier of space than the pressure was suddenly lessened back to normal levels. To Frisk, it was like a reindeer had been laying on them and finally got up. They felt an immense physical and psychological relief.

They had done it, the launch was over.

From now, their job would just consist in surviving, not going insane, and making sure that everything was going as planned on the ship, occasionally transmitting some information back to Earth. For over half a year.

As for their rocket, it would in the somewhat near future be passing by close to the moon in order to use its gravity to accelerate further and adjust its direction. but for Frisk, the only major change would be to be able to see the moon up very close for a while. Then, it would be a long way to Mars.

And well, that was how they got to this point. Frisk concluded, finally looking away from the Earth and leaving the back of the ship to go check and their daily tasks.

One funny thing is, Frisk was actually even better equipped to handle this voyage than those who had made the offer to them had thought.

They had believed Frisk would be psychologically able to handle it as they were already used to this kind of feeling of isolation from everyone else, and whilst this was indeed correct, there was another thing that they didn't know about that would also be making it easier : Frisk wasn't quite entirely alone. They still had their incorporeal companion around. And as far as loneliness went, they helped a ton.

No problem.

Frisk smiled before going to do their exercices.

They were nearly there. After 8 months of seemingly endless travel through interplanetary space, their ship had two days ago reached the fourth planet of the solar system. Since then, it has spun around Mars a few times, slowly inserting itself into its orbit and getting closer to its surface.

Frisk would be landing today.

"Today". This word had considerably less meaning here. For Frisk, day and night as everyone else knew them hadn't really existed as anything else than abstract concepts of time for the last half a year. There were no such things as sunrise or sunset in this ship. There wasn't any big difference between "night" and "day" aside from the fact that they spent most of the former sleeping. Their schedule was based on a digital clock using the time that it currently was on Earth in the timezone that they had gotten used to before the launch.

Earth was so far away from here... When they looked at it from space, they could recognise the Earth easily as was quite a lot bigger than all the stars they could see and remained distinctly blue colored, but they could hardly see more than that with the naked eye. They did see some greener parts that they knew must come from continents but weren't able to tell which part of the world they were looking at from here.

As for the moon, it was still bigger than the stars. Enough so to see a circular shape rather than a point which gave it away, and of course it was always close to the Earth.

Frisk and the center controls on Earth had been in direct contact for hours now. But there was one big inconvenience that made sharing information really tedious. Mars was far, like, really far. So far that even at lightspeed, the fastest speed in the universe, it took a whole 9 minutes to travel the current distance between the two planets. (which was currently far from its closest possible value)

This meant that if Frisk wanted to communicate something to those on Earth. They would have to wait 9 minutes for the message to arrive on Earth, then 9 more minutes for the reply to make it back to Mars. Needless to say that if they had an emergency problem, there were good chances that by the time they could receive any instructions, it would likely be far too late. They would have to deal with it on their own.

This hadn't been a problem with the Apollo missions, where it only took lightspeed barely over one second to cover the distance between the Earth and the moon. Communication could still be made pretty much in direct. But here, Frisk had to suffer through what Chara called "interplanetary lag". (Ah Chara, never change)

Regardless, it had been decided that Frisk would begin the descent very soon. From here, they would assist the ai that was in charge of guiding the module and landing on martian soil by supervising it and by manually adjusting if they felt like it was necessary. Everything taking place in the module would of course be retransmited to the center controls.

When the moment came, Frisk found themself surprisingly calm. Aside from manually checking three times that everything was going as planned, they kept their composure until the start of the descent.

During the few hours that the descent lasted, Frisk spend a good 95% of it verifying that there wasn't any issue with the numbers that kept flashing on screen and that the ai did its job correctly. At any moment they knew that if something went south they would have to take commands manually to finish the landing so they couldn't afford to let their guard drop.

In the end, there was no such problem. this part of the mission played out exactly as planned. The module began slowling down progressively until before deploying itself safely on the ground.

A couple seconds later, failing to hide their excitement, Frisk sent a message informing that the landing has had been a success. It would be some time before the good news reached the ears of the population of Earth. So many people must be waiting...

It would be a few hours before the moment everyone was waiting for. For now, the module would begin analysing its surroundings and sending the data back to Earth under Frisk's supervision.

Countless people let out a sigh of relief when the news about the landing reached them. A few seconds later only, the information was relayed to people all around the globe trough television and rapid translation. A reconstitued image of the landing site was established from the data that they had now begun receiving, which soon allowed accurate images of the module on Mars to be shown as well.

Mettaton, as a TV star, was unsurprisingly the one with the biggest house out of all of Frisk's old friends (The Dreemurrs and Frisk could have lived in such a place too if they wished, but had no interest in it), so for the event he invited everybody over so that they could see it everything play out together. All of them had cheered in relief as well once this nail-biting (in a very litteral sense for Alphys) phase was confirmed to have went without a catch.

But let it be them, the center controls, Frisk or the rest of the population, the part that they were really waiting for would not take place before a bit more time.

The wait was unsufferable.

Five minutes before the big moment, a total of 4.6 billion people were watching all around the world. Waiting to witness this momentous event that would mark history books. It was a considerable amount of the world population, the only reason it wasn't even higher was due to those who didn't have access to media through which they could see the event play out in the first place.

Frisk mentally repeated their speech one last time.

Everyone knew that Neil Armstrong's first words on the moon were an impossible act to follow, but Frisk had still been given some as well. Those words would join a few others among the sentences that every human on Earth knew about. While it was not from them, Frisk would be glad enough to have been the one to have said it.

The module finally opened and Frisk peeked outside. The situation was so similar yet so different from the one in 1969. The red planet's atmosphere made its presence clear as a slow wind kept sending sand against their combinaison.

Frisk moved very slowly and silently before getting on the ladder. The gravity of Mars was much weaker than Earth and Frisk hadn't properly walked in months. How silly would it be if they they messed it up and tripped now of all times ?

...

This was normally where Chara would comment something funny. But not this time. They didn't dare to disturb them in such a moment.

Frisk went down the steps of the ladder one by one until they reached the ladder's foot. Then, they turned around and stood up straight, staring at the martian horizon.

After checking that their transmitters were working correctly. Frisk began building up the courage to do what they had to.

"I am going to step off the ladder." They said to those who would be watching this scene from Earth in a few minutes. No one would be responding to them of course, they were just speaking into the darkness. But they didn't want not to say anything either.

A few seconds after, they took their hands off the ladder and after a very small jump forward, they were pulled downwards by the planet's gravity until their feet touched ground.

Once their second feet joined the first and they regained balance, Frisk spoke up :

"We as a race step foot on this planet in peace, not war." They began, refering to Mars being the roman god of war.

"To ensure that Humanity's candle will not blow out in the wind." They finished.

Mankind had truly left its cradle.

Frisk smiled.

While the rest of mankind was still waiting for the module to open, Frisk had already begun to trod a little on the red planet's surface. Eventually, they decided to stop and get back closer to the module.

They would have kept doing that a little longer, but they could already begin feeling the backlash caused by having to walk once more after floating around for nearly a year. Astronauts often had majors issues regarding basic things like walking when they came back after months in space. Even in a place like Mars where gravity was much weaker and walking much easier, Frisk could still feel parts of the effect. They also felt a bit dizzy... This issue could have been avoided by simulating gravity, but the ship couldn't have completed the mission if such a thing had been installed.

They would only be able to withstand it for so long before requiring medical attention.

But it was fine. Frisk was never supposed to be given a way out of this place anyway. They knew what they were getting into from the start. They weren't quite certain how long they'd stay here before giving in, but for now they could enjoy being on another planet.

They did however have a few more things to do before being left to themself.

Earth's inhabitants rejoiced as the images and sound and the first steps and words of a human on Mars finally reached them. Giving billions a memory that they would nev... Actually, that was a lie, they would forget it no matter if they wished it or not. But for now, monsters, humans, they were all celebrating alike.

In the meantime, on Mars, Frisk was going down the ladder a second time after going back into the module to take a flag with them.

The flag they would be planting on Mars was not that of their native country, neither was it that of the billionaire's. It was that of the United Nations. Well, almost. Frisk had insisted for the flag that was planted on Mars to have a slight difference from the regular flag of the United Nations. A very small Delta Rune in the center. Practically invisible unless you were really looking for it.

Most had been against Frisk's proposition when they made it. After all, this landing was a purely human achievement. Nearly everybody judged it unjustified to represent the kingdom of monsters on Mars too. But as the entire mission was only possible as long as Frisk cooperated with them, after they put enough pressure on the issue, Frisk was able to enforce their demand anyway. Chara had been very pleased by this turn of events.

Not without a little pride, Frisk stuck the flag into the ground. The wind allowing it to fly far better and more naturally than the one on the moon ever could have.

Feeling full of determination, the human felt the familiar feeling of a SAVE point appearing not far from them. They would obviously not SAVE here, that would be a horrible decision. They hadn't SAVED since before their launch and that was for a very good reason.

Some time later, Frisk received a vocal transmission from Earth that must have been sent once they receive the footage of their fist step and words. It was both congratulating them and thanking them for having helped their kind to take another giant leap forward. Finally, it invited them to stay on Mars for as long as they could support to give time to the module's ai to analyse as much data as possible and to above all memorise as much of said data as possible before ending the mission.

Heh... "Ending the mission".

That was a funny way to say "Let yourself die".

Back on Earth, a few minutes after Frisk was shown raising the UN flag, the video blacked out and a pre-recorded speech was played to the world.

"The one that went to Mars to explore in peace will stay on Mars to rest in peace."

"They know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice."

"They have laid down one of their lives for Mankind's most noble goal : The search for the truth and understanding."

"In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; In their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man."

"In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our hero is a human of flesh and blood."

"Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man's search will not be denied. But they were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts."

"For every human being who looks up at the stars in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind."

In the middle of all those cheers, one might have forgotten that Frisk's Mars mission was always a suicide mission.

There was no way to make recovery possible after the trip without disrespecting the delay. It was a one way trip. Frisk would stay on Mars until they did what was now inevitable.

There was only one way they could come back alive. They would have to LOAD their SAVE from 8 months ago, which would have the effect of erasing the entire space mission from the memory of everybody but them.

They were 160 000 000 kilometers away from civilisation. The most isolated any human being in history had ever been.

Yet, funnily enough, they could come back in less than a second.

They were so far from home yet so close.

Light itself took 9 minutes to make the return trip. Frisk could make it in a fraction of a second.

They let that sink in for a moment. Their power was such an incredible ability. The laws of time and space themselves meant nothing compared to the power of their determination.

Actually. Wait. Frisk suddenly had a thought. The thing with a black hole was that its gravity was so strong nothing in the universe could enter one and escape it, right ? Not even light. But what if they somehow ended up in one, could they just LOAD out of it ? Would that work ?

Though... Time and space themselves lose their meaning past a black hole's event horizon don't they ? if so, then having SAVED a location in time and space would also lose meaning which would result in them being unable to LOAD. So maybe that wouldn't work after all.

Whatever, its not like that would ever happen to them anyway.

Frisk got up again. They went to check the readings. Their last task would be to bring some knowledge with them. Even if the data was lost in majority, if they could provide some of it back after LOADING it could still be quite helpful from a scientific standpoint.

They are jerks.

Frisk perked up.

I said they are jerks. You just single handedly allowed for the greatest achievement in the history of your kind after having signed away your life for it, having spent over 2 years training and having spent 8 months in isolation, and now the last thing they want you to do is to let yourself die as slowly as possible in hopes of maybe getting a little more data.

It was true that when said like that, it didn't sound very good. But Frisk knew what they signed for. They had accepted this. They didn't do all of that just to dip out at the end. And hey, dying on Mars would definitly be the coolest way they'd have died.

You don't have to actually stay here until your last breath either. You deserve that. It will make barely any difference and i refuse to watch you kill yourself for no good reason just because these human asked you to. What extra data will you even manage to obtain and remember if you're dying anyway ?

Well, they did have a point there.

Stay as long as you can afford it but once things become too unbearable for you, just LOAD. There is no point in letting yourself go through the part where you start agonising before passing out. Spare yourself the pain.

After thinking about it a little, Frisk resigned to Chara's objection. If they could negociate about the flag, there was no way they wouldn't have gotten them to say yes to this. The world owed them one. It was only fair.

Frisk decided to try and make use of the time they could still spend here. Let it be touching rocks or looking at the sky. It was all so beautiful. So unique. They wondered how much further technology would advance in the future...

Oxygen wasn't going to be the limiting factor, they had enough of it for quite a while actually. It was their own body fatigue that would bring them down first. Between everything they went through in the last few hours and their body not being able to handle going back to feeling gravity. They felt so weak and exhausted.

Frisk knew that the control center on Earth was likely going to stop showing video images of them soon, if they hadn't already. They wouldn't want to show them slowly dying to the public... They also wondered how the population must feel like currently, knowing that it would all be RESET very soon, and that it could happen at any second for all they knew.

About half an hour later, Chara asked a heavily fatigued Frisk still sitting on martian soil a question.

Hey. Can i do something ?

Frisk nodded, unsure of what this was supposed to mean.

They felt their foot lift itself on its own, then press itself on the ground again. Frisk smiled a little. Seems like their friend too wanted to try setting a foot on Mars.

The androgynous human didn't get back inside until they felt like they wouldn't be able to take it for much longer. The AI was summing up its main observations into a few dozen sentences so that they could be memorised by them. Sending it back to Earth would be useless since it'd all be erased soon.

As it turned out, Frisk was having difficulty memorising it in the state they were in. Not wanting to risk prolonging things too much, Chara proposed to help them with that. Two consciousnesses learn faster than one after all...

Ten more minutes passed. They were done.

Alone, exhausted, unable to concentrate and having difficulties to move, Frisk took one last look at the martian Sky before doing what they had to.

The challenge ahead is immense, but you stay determined. A familiar voice whispered to them in their mind.

They had only one thing left to do now. Under the eyes of countless people cheering them from behind their screens, Frisk SAVED.

FILE LOADED

Suddenly, Frisk's facial expression changed radically. They blinked a couple times and looked around. There were so many cameras. There were people. People. There were on Earth. There were home.

They lit up and raised both of their arms towards the sky. They didn't feel tired or weak at all anymore. They felt... They felt great !

"Its so good to be back !" Frisk voiced out their thoughts whilst wearing a large smile. For everyone watching them, the message was clear. They had LOADED back to this SAVE. Frisk wasn't going to Mars anymore... The mission had already taken place.

Instead of the launch happening like it should have, Frisk spent most of that day providing the world with the best resume they could of how the mission went instead, giving the company their data and basically being interviewed non stop.

For the public, it was bittersweet. The greatest achievement in history wasn't happening anymore because it had already been done. There was no transmission, no recording, no nothing. Just Frisk's own point of view on an event that no one remembered but them.

The truth was that it just didn't feel the same as the moon landing did. There was no impatient wait, no watching it on TV as it happened, it went from "We've never never been on Mars" to "We've been on Mars" in one second and this was it. It was much less immersive. It didn't feel as real of an accomplishment. Not in this timeline at least. It was just Frisk telling the world that they had done it in the previous LOAD.

Six years later, another manned mission was sent to Mars, one that actually had multiple people on board and made it back to Earth as the tech hd now been perfected. The event actually had an insane following. It was after all the first time a human walked on Mars in this iteration of the timeline.

...Or the first ever, depending on who you asked.

Frisk's announcement of a successful Mars landing was honestly the perfect story to make conspiracy theories around. It was supposedly the greatest achievement in the history of man, realised by a time traveller and a billionaire, and there was literally no evidence that it had really happened. None whatsoever. The only thing they had was Frisk's word for it. That was it.

And as they were someone who would only benefit from claiming it had worked and who's words were impossible to fact check, well, many people doubted Frisk's honesty regarding this story. Especially all the people that disliked them in the first place.

Many thought that Frisk had lied and that the billionaire was in on it. That the landing was a scam they both set up so that he could pretend to have kept the deadline and so that Frisk could get a pass into history books. Others believed that the deal they made had been real but that the mission went wrong and Frisk never made it there, only to lie and pretend that they actually had so people would still see them as the first person on Mars anyway.

They were still believed by the majority of the population, but the first Mars landing controversy and the conspiracy theories around it would remain a topic of debate for decades to come.

This mattered relatively little to Frisk. This had been an experience they wouldn't have traded away for anything in the world.

Author notes :

The pre-recorded speech that was played on Earth after Frisk raised the flag was actually a real one. It was the speech Nixon would have given if Apollo 11 had ended in disaster and resulted in Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin being left to die on the moon. It was too fitting not to be repurposed here to be about Frisk instead.

I am no expert on spatial exploration so im sorry if i made any technical mistakes.

I know that this story doesn't make much sense timeline wise but after having the idea of the concept i just couldn't help but to write it.

Hmm ? A character in this story reminds you of someone that exists in real life ? I have no idea what you're talking about.