6. Progress
[[File 6.1 GA-20051010-0-#]]
"Have you got this, or is this all on me?"
"welp…"
"It doesn't really matter."
"heh, i was about to say, i've got the camera. hard for me to introduce this thing and run the film at the same time. how 'bout you go ahead?"
"Oh. Right. Right. Well then…"
"camera's rolling."
"Wait – what?"
"you'll be fine, rain. just remember: layman's terms."
"Layman's terms. Layman's terms. Alright. Here we go." The scientist turned to stare into the lens of the camera with a half-nervous, half-excited jerk. He did not just buzz with excitement, but outright hummed, a little melody dancing in his throat before he found the words to speak. He stretched his right hand forward and waved ecstatically at the lens, obscuring the view of anything else but a wildly-shaking hand, before he backed up a step to gesture at an enormous white box behind him. A haphazard collection of controls, gears, display screens, and mechanisms grew like molds around the outside.
"Alright. Day nine hundred twelve, experiment one hundred four. The Machine." Now that Rain had begun speaking, excitement rose into his voice. The wavering hum-like melody turned into a gleeful cadence as he presented the box behind him. As he spoke, he gestured wildly. "Yeah, yeah, I know, stupid name for it… but hey! Easy to remember. The Machine. Today, we're going to use it to travel to another world."
Sans stepped in a wide circle around Rain while the taller scientist leaned in toward one of the dials. "I don't have time to explain everything that's going on, but basically, we're going to make a carbon molecule jump to a parallel world.
"Basically, the world as we know it is a bunch of universes that split off from one another like the branches of a tree. Indeterminate quanta st- I, uh, the – the – there are points in time where the world isn't deterministic. That is, most of the time, we can predict cause and effect without any problem. But in some cases, two different outcomes are possible, and the best we can do to predict which will occur is through some probabilistic computations. Anyway." Rain flapped his arms loosely at the camera. "When there are two possible outcomes, what happens is that both outcomes actually occur. Time as we know it splits, and two universes are created, branching out with the two respective possibilities. One universe has option A occur, a second universe has option B occur. And this happens on and on and on and on for all possible outcomes, creating basically infinite universes. So if you've ever thought about what a world would be like if something different had occurred in your past, the truth of the matter is – that world does exist! It's not the world you live in, but that world is out there, real, concrete, just as real as the things going on right here, right now.
"But back to the Machine." Rain pointed awkwardly toward the device again and grinned. "What we're about to do will prove that all these different worlds exist. Uh, I think I already said that we're going to make this carbon molecule go into a different world. That is, we'll send it back in time, a whole new universe will be created, and that carbon molecule will be a part of a new one. Erm… more or less. That was a really bad and inaccurate explanation, wasn't it, Sans?"
"ehhhh… it'll work. don't worry about it."
"Okay. Keep going?"
"yeh."
"So… then… right, right, I'll keep going. Uh. So we've done this before with some other particles. Today is special because we're doing it with a full molecule. That's uh… that's uh…"
"a whopping big deal for nerds like us."
"Exactly. I mean we're not – ohhhh, fine. Sure. Nerds.
"Now we have to ask ourselves a big question about this molecule we're sending into another universe. How do we prove that it's gone to a parallel world when we aren't leaving our world ourselves? If this experiment wor- when this experiment is done, you'll see not one, but two carbon molecules. One of them is the one that's never left our universe. The other entered a world in which something else happened and then came back. Uhhh… it's sort of complicated but anyway… hence two of them! We'll see both molecules. Well, not see them because they're microscopic, heehee, we can't see microscopic things, but… um. Yeah. I think I've covered everything?"
"let's show them our stuff."
"Great!" Rain's gloved right hand hovered over the dial. For the first time since the video began, he was not moving, not jerking, not even shaking. A suspicious cast crept into his eyes, and he squinted at the video recorder operator.
"You're… actually recording, right, Sans? Camera's on, batteries are full, nothing is muted, the lens cap's off, you've actually been recording…"
"hey, you don't trust me?" Sans' voice, from outside the view of the camera, uttered this with mock sadness.
"I know you like trolling people. Which means, no, I'm not sure I trust you with the camera. Augh, you know what? I'm checking now." Rain straightened and marched straight toward the screen. The camera's viewing screen jostled and spun, and in the background a voice muttered something about all the camera functions maybe working. At last Rain conceded that Sans was not pranking him, handed back the camera, and the view once more settled on the Machine and the squirrely scientist.
"Don't you dare touch the 'off' button."
"wouldn't dream of it."
"So." Rain exhaled an enormous breath. "This is it. The big moment. Here goes nothing."
In a bold and rapid motion, he whirled the dial. The Machine rose from a slumbering state and began churning, groaning, moaning, roaring, shaking. Vibrations began with subtle purrs and rose to greater, frightful intensities. Popping dramatically, rearing up like a horse with intense screaming, the Machine flew off the ground. Rain rushed away, and for a moment, it almost appeared as though the jumping machine would race after him. Bucking and kicking, it rocked in place, bursts and pops and cracks and roars screaming at unwholesome decibels.
The camera shook.
"turn it off. turn it off!"
"Shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot!"
Smoke shot out in a sudden torrent, a pillar surging forth from machine to ceiling.
Camera vision clogged with colloids.
Coughing. One last explosive burst. And then silence.
"I think we… broke it."
"dammit."
"So much for experiment one-oh-four."
[[File 6.2 GA-20051123-0-#]]
Sans stood at the corner of W. D. Gaster's office, waiting for the doctor to notice him from his peripheral vision. As per usual, it took almost no time for Gaster to recognize his colleague lingering at the door.
"COME." Gaster waved Sans inside perfunctorily.
He did step inside, though only by a few steps. With his body half-turned toward the door, as though to exit again, Sans informed his supervisor, "i've got something to show you."
"YOU WANT TALK WHAT YOU?" The Royal Scientist pointed first to Sans, then raised both palms upward while curling his fingers inward. His fists closed except for his pointer fingers, which he kept raised, and waggled front and back twice. Gaster pulled his hands out to his torso, flattened them, and raised the palms to the ceiling while simultaneously lowering his eyebrows, before finally returning to point at Sans one last time. "What do you want to talk about?"
"i just figured out how to time travel. as in, the real deal."
Gaster did not betray much surprise, but Sans' long experience working with the physicist allowed him to read the pursed jaw and slightly-widened eyesockets. The hands twitching toward his rectangular glasses frames also betrayed excitement. "WHAT?" This announcement was certainly not expected now… not even expected five years from now. Sans' claim certainly perked Gaster's interests.
"I SERIOUS." The skeleton gestured to himself with his pointer finger, then placed his finger on his chin and rotated it around once. "follow me if you want to see, doc."
"SHOW-ME." Resolutely, the Royal Scientist placed both of his palms on his desk to help push himself to his feet faster. He marched past the desk and lingered right behind Sans' neck, waiting – seemingly impatiently – for the shorter physicist to lead the way. Sans, with a grin, began to trundle down the hall, taking an easy, slow, casual stroll which almost made Gaster trip on his own feet. It would be undignified for Gaster to prompt Sans to hurry his pace, so he trod right behind Sans, barely a foot behind him.
Not only did Sans travel slowly, but his intended trajectory seemed hard to deduce. He stepped past several of the main labs on the top floor, waving to several scientists as he passed, and then turned twice more to the left to head back to the office area. It almost appeared as though Sans intended to complete a giant loop on this floor of the research building… and in fact, after very slowly trudging up the halls, he pointed his finger back at Gaster's door.
Gaster was distinctly displeased. He followed Sans back into the office, then whirled around, demanding, "What was that?"
"hey, before you get grouchy, look up." Sans pointed to the clock. Gaster's gaze followed the gesture, to where a round clock read ten past two.
"we left here at two. now it's ten past two. we just traveled forward through time ten minutes. pretty cool, huh?"
Gaster's glare could have cooked a house down.
"with some more practice, i might be able to go even further forward in time."
The glare intensified.
It only entertained Sans more. With reactions like that, Gaster should never have wondered why his colleague always pranked him.
"unrelated…" Sans said "…but our latest test results came back negative. have a good afternoon, doc." And Sans reached out, shut the door behind Gaster, and walked, whistling, down the hall a second time.
[[File 6.3 GA-20060221-0-#]]
"The Machine keeps breaking down. We don't have enough power."
Rain, the designer of their still-unnamed "Machine", pointed to the corner of the laboratory where it was stored. Gaster calmly stepped forward, finger rubbing over his glasses for a moment, before he reached out and lightly stroked the Machine. His finger bones carefully examined the contraption, its modules, its circuits, its configurations. Rain handled the large bulk of engineering on the team, yet Gaster understood enough to provide a perfunctory examination of their now-broken equipment. Long, stick-bug form bent down, examined something close to the ground, then finally straightened.
"I AGREE." He pointed to his skull, then brought both hands forward before his chest, pointer fingers extended. "The energy costs of this experimentation are naturally going to be high. I doubt there is a more efficient substitute?"
Sans lingered in the back, unable to contribute to the conversation. He knew almost nothing about engineering – he used equipment, not built it.
Rain, meanwhile, responded to Gaster. He shook his head and pinched his first two fingers against his thumb. "NO." He could conclude this without doubt, having attempted a number of modifications on the Machine over the last few months. The results were always the same: breakage, experiments aborted from insufficient power. Their latest calculations suggested that nothing in the laboratory would be able to provide the required energy for their operations.
W. D. Gaster paced once around the machine, rubbing a thin finger to his forehead in thought, holding onto his elbow with the other hand. He glanced up, though, and pulled his hands before him to sign, "We could hook your device directly to the CORE."
Sans could only see the back of Rain's head, but even then, his colleague apparently hesitated. "That… could work," Rain slowly responded, a little uncertain if Gaster's proposal were wise. "It's dangerous, though…"
Gaster regarded Rain carefully. "This may be the only to ensure the success of this project. Yet we cannot make foolish risk. What is your assessment on using the CORE, then?"
Rain fidgeted for a moment. "I'll look into it. It's worth looking into, I guess. But I don't think we could increase power and pass general safety protocols."
"That does us no good then. Breaking safety measures undermines the very nature of our goal to save monsterkind."
No longer glancing at the Machine, Gaster started stepping out of the lab. He made one more long comment before he exited, though. "As much as it would disappoint me to see this research fail, we must be pragmatic. If this does not work, there are other avenues I can pursue to find a means of leaving the underground, amongst them pursuing harvest of human magic from the barrier proper, and developing the blasters. Make some safety calculations nevertheless. I will send you blueprints and energy reports from the CORE Royal Laboratory Branch. I'll see to it you receive the information by the end of the week."