CHAPTER TWENTY SIX: the mistake

Archemedies wanders down the tunnel, far into its depths now, his gaze still darting between every detail and noting them with scientific precision. He turns corners and winds through stalagmites, his opalescent white eyes wide and focused as he navigates the twining tunnels, mapping every rock and turn in his mind.

This is Archemedies as he actually is- not the dazed, distant and fragile version of himself that gaster met in the fuzzy void. Archemedies is back to his old self- the persistent, stubborn and sometimes rather headstrong scientist that has known gaster so long they are closer than any other. he hops down ledges and squeezes through gaps almost to small even for him, the rough rock scraping against his scales as he pushes through with a small grunt. Suddenly, however, a glow hits him in the face- the reptilian monster stumbling to his feet and finding himself on a ledge overlooking hotland's main, huge, cavern.

His opalescent eyes widen, and he gazes out over the maze of grayscale paths and platforms of rock, all of them emerging from the huge rivers of monochromatic lava that flow through all hotland. Steam vents, carpeted paths, spiderwebs and stages, elevators and what looks like a resort- all of it gray and frozen, and some of it even new to him. He can even see the lab in the distance, the sight filling him with nostalgia…but what really has him stunned is the monstrous hulk of metal pipes and vents and mechanical gears that rests on the horizon, the gray world cutting off into blackness behind it. That must be the core…it is suspended above the sea of lava by its own piping, vents and tubes winding across its surface, the mechanical wonder still fascinating even at this distance. Its beautiful.

Archemedies wolf whistles, impressed. Gaster always talked about how it would power the underground, replacing the generators powering each town and lighting the dark passages that connected them, but even so…he is well deserving of the royal title. He has certainly earned it, after all. Archemedies shakes his head as if to clear it, snapping back into focus. Right. If the lab is here, then perhaps some of the experiments within it are too. He needs to get there- and who knows what else he might find on his way? But, first things first. Finding a way down from this ledge…He shuffles around, peering over the edge and seeing a mound of boulders nearby that just about stretches to the height of the ledge. Still, it is quite a jump to reach it.

Archemedies huffs, his scaled eyebrows furrowing as he backs up as far as the ledge will allow. his tail coils up behind him as he takes a deep breath, and suddenly sprints forward all while praying he won't- CRASH! Archemedies yelps with each hit, tumbling down, down, down the pile of boulders, his tail lashing as Archemedies hunches into a ball, his spines sticking straight out as he curls up armadillo-style. His scales harden and lock together like armor, and he bounces off the last of the rocks, sliding to a stop at the bottom as he groans with pain.

Archemedies slowly uncurls, laying flat on his back and grimacing as every inch of him protests, his scales unlocking as he tries to tell whether or not every bone in his body is actually broken. Still, at least he's at the bottom now… he pushes himself up, wincing, and looks around. He's standing on one of the main paths now, what appears to be a lone sentry station half-buried in the rubble behind him, but not much else of interest.

"Hello? Anyone here? Helloooooo?"

He calls, but nobody answers. He huffs. Nothing… he figured as much.

Turning now to the half-buried sentry station, he scrabbles onto the counter and pokes his snout into the shelf beneath. The only thing he is rewarded with is a sickening stench of ketchup and other such condiments, making him sneeze hard enough to send a ripple of clicks down his spines. He digs around under the counter anyway, and finds a single item shoved into a crevice- a lone, decidedly empty bottle of ketchup…or mustard. Without color he can't really tell. He flings it over his shoulder with his tail, the bottle clattering as it hits the rocks and bounces away. Useless. He scrambles back out of the sentry station and begins to wander down the path, crossing a bridge as his claws click against the wood in a steady rhythm. It's a wonder that it hasn't burst into flame, what with being suspended over lava…but then again, the temperature is only mildly lukewarm, not the scorching pulse of heat hotland usually is, so there's a good chance the lava isn't actually hot.

Suddenly, he spots something of interest- a water cooler, still half full with a reasonable stack of plastic cups at its side. He trots over to it, and slips the small bone into his coat pocket, winding his tail around the small toggle and attempting to fill a cup. He's half wondering how he's not even the slightest bit thirsty after literal years without a drink, but nothing comes out of the tap, no matter how tightly he coils his tail tip over the toggle. He growls at the machine, whacking it with the thicker part of his tail, but not even a drop comes from the frustrating appliance. He sighs.

"Fine, be that way…"

He mutters under his breath as he turns, continuing down the path, grumbling the whole way.

Archemedies continues steadily onward, persistent in his exploration. He slowly makes his way across the monochrome hotland, leaping across the gaps between silent steam vents, examining deactivated puzzles, struggling through spiderwebs- all of it in the name of reaching the lab. The experiments there…research, equipment. The sorts of things they could use to get home…he sends a shudder down his spines, shaking off the cobwebs caking them as he pads through a dark, web encrusted parlor. Is there really hope of getting home? He'd given up on hope long ago…is it really worth it to begin again? He shakes his head, nosing aside some thick webbing as he emerges from the dark parlor. If he can get to the lab, it just might be.

He's just digging through a (decidedly empty) nicecream cart, when a distant clatter of rocks rings out, the sudden noise breaking the suffocating silence. his head shoots up, an empty wrapper impaled on one of his spines, the reptilian monster rapidly turning his head this way and that to try and find the source of the noise, but nothing stirs. For a moment he can believe he might've seen a flicker of cloth, but after a moment, he decides it must've been some trick of the light…Nothing moves that quietly.

"There is something strange going on…"

He mutters to himself, and snorts. When is there not something strange going on? Gaster showing up from nowhere after 30 years of nothing, finding a dog, that soul…incident, crooks for hell's sake. There's always something going on… not that I didn't miss the chaos that seems to ride on gasters' coattails. He shakes the empty packet off his spines and abandons the nicecream cart, continuing forward a bit more cautiously, hesitant claws clicking against the stone. White lava glows from below as white lights shine far above him, the grayed out rock below him as solid as ever. His claws click against it, and he senses from the geography he's close to the lab now…he wonders, what is in there? Will there still be power? The lights work, and he could even feel some of the wallpipes humming, so perhaps there is hope…then, he turns a corner, and the lab comes into view.

Archemedies stops, for two very good reasons.

one: he worked at the lab a long time, and considering it's also the place of his death, seeing it again now brings back a shit ton of complicated emotions.

Two: it's doors are forced open.

He blinks, unsure what he's feeling at the sight of the uneven, obviously broken automatic doors but knowing that it's bad. Dread crawls up his spine, and his eyes widen slightly, shimmering white as he stares into the pitch blackness within.

After a long moment of silence, Archemedies takes a deep breath and takes a step forward, slowly approaching the entrance to the lab, the room beyond in deep shadow. It's so dark he can barely see, and as he approaches, he can hear faint…rustling. As if something still lingers inside the lab, hidden among thick shadows…Gathering courage, Archemedies steps tentatively to the threshold, pausing as his snout hovers just before the darkness. Even now, all he sees is cracked and chipped tile, illuminated by the dim light from the door, his stretched shadow cutting across the small patch of weak light. Dim shapes of machines along the walls blur into the darkness, and as he listens, he can hear a faint whirring…

…something here still works!

Emboldened by this, he forces himself to step forward into the darkness of the lab, his claws landing on a cracked tile with a sharp crunch and making him yelp in surprise as his sharp teeth clench. He looks around wildly, and lets out a heavy sigh of relief upon seeing there is no danger, hesitantly continuing forward with but a small glance over his shoulder at the door, his spines flattening against his back as they always do when he is uneasy. He doesn't like the dark…

…ironic, considering he's spent so long in it.

He nervously peers around in the darkness, treading carefully on cracked tile, his tail hovering along behind him where he holds it above the shards of broken circuitry and metal that coat the floor. He cranes his neck out, the reptilian monster stretching out so as to peer around a large hunk of fallen ceiling at a large array of screens and controls that rest against the wall in the darkness, the shadows blurring away any detail as Archemedies teeters, leaning over the painful-looking meter wide field of broken glass that blocks his path. He can still hear that whirring…seems it's coming not from the main array, but from above him…He tilts his round head upwards, and stares up at the second floor above, a hole in the ceiling revealing some shimmer of light from above him. He squints. An emergency light maybe? If any of the emergency generators are running, that could be invaluable escaping this place! He huffs, determined, and fixes his sights on the inoperative treadmill…

…which is on the other side of the mess of glass.

Archemedies sighs.

Slowly, Archemedies backs up, sweeping away any debris behind him with this tail, creating a clear path for himself as he takes careful steps backwards. He doesn't stop until the tip of his tail brushes the back wall, and as soon as it does, he fixes his gaze on the treadmill (or the vague blob of darkness he assumes to be the treadmill) and prepares to either defy his less than stellar capabilities when it comes to jumping, or faceplant in glass.

Unfortunately, the latter is far more likely than the former.

He grimaces at this thought, but shakes his head hard. Possibly faceplanting in glass is a small price to pay to be able to curl up in his own bed again…his claws curl up against the tile as he mentally prepares himself for the huge amount of pain this will probably cause him, and sprints.

Thumpthumpthumpthump-

-Archemedies screws his eyes shut and grimaces, waiting for the impact into sharp glass as he hurls himself as hard as he can in the direction of the treadmill-

THWAM!

Archemedies lands hard on his side, but thankfully, he faceplants on cool tile, not the mess of glass he's only barely cleared. He lets out a sharp 'oof!' upon impact, but leaps up almost immediately, scrambling to his feet and blinking at the fact that he is not, in fact, bleeding. He glances behind him at the mess of glass, thanks the Angel for his incredible luck, then turns back to the treadmill with a determined huff. The faint glow is still visible at the top of the frozen machine, and Archemedies squints, straining to see in the pitiful light. faintly, he can just barely make out papers piled everywhere on the top level, even tacked to the walls in a cobbly sort of mishmash of scribbles, Archemedies squinting hard but unable to make anything out at this distance.

Slowly, Archemedies attempts to climb the steep treadmill, his claws digging into the rubber as the reptilian monster somehow pushes himself to the top, despite the fact the treadmill is so steep it's very nearly vertical. He finally manages to reach the top floor and thumps onto the tile, pushing himself up with his face and shaking himself off as he blinks, opalescent eyes adjusting to the dim light. He can just barely see that in the center of the wall, among the mess of papers, a long strip of metal paneling is torn away, wires exposed and screens- his eyes widen, and he hurries forwards, darting in front of the flickering screens and instantly scanning over the shuddering command strings that glitch upon them. Damage reports from the core…he winces. It's…bad. He never worked on the core, only saw the half-assed original designs gaster produced in the beginning, but still. It's only barely functioning, in a constant state of near-failure- but still, its power output is staggering…this machine, it's so much more powerful than what gaster originally proposed. Then, Archemedies realizes something.

Gaster…he told me he fell into the 'core experiment' which I naturally assumed to be the test run of the core…but what if the core has more than one purpose?

What if Gaster did something else?

Archemedies drags a damaged keyboard out from the wall, and rapidly begins to type with a stylus gripped between his teeth, laser focused as he interrogates the degrading systems.

{ ;} ( .last?)

[/last executed function was function 00. /]

{ ;} ( 00.9649B)

[/specification for function 00.9649B: "timesplosion"/]

{ ;} ( "timesplosion")

[/further specification for function 00.9649B; The final test of a series of timeline experiments regarding the use of enormous amounts of geothermal and ambimagical power to achieve a…

As Archemedies reads the lines upon lines of description in Gaster's signature technobabble, his brow slowly furrows more and more. Gaster…how are you still alive? He wonders to himself, chewing absently on the already thoroughly chewed stylus. The amount of power that must've been generated to achieve this…he types a few more queries into the system, and finds that essentially, half the fuses in this thing have been melted- the coolant system is down, ventilation is hopeless… all of that damage caused by the one experiment. the experiment that killed his best friend. Or, well, nearly killed…Archemedies huffs, troubled. If Gaster really fell into the core during that…

He shivers.

Poor, poor gaster…

He mutters to himself, imputing more commands, but the degraded systems seem incapable of providing him with much. They flicker and shudder, and archemedies eventually resigns to the fact he is most likely not going to get much more from them…though, perhaps, there is some other way to find out what happened that day…? Gaster did always keep that log of his… Archemedies shakes his head. No. He's not going to skulk around digging through his friends' lognotes, after all, he can just…ask him what happened, right…?

Archemedies frowns, trying to imagine how that conversation would go.

…just one log.

he starts typing once again, the flickering screen the only light in the room, swiftly pulling the files from what's left of the memory of this system, and finds that only one is still accessible.

[/ENTRY NO° SEVENTEEN/]

And with a clock, he opens it. The words scroll down the screen, interrupted by corrupted data blocks, but most of it- enough of it- is still readable.

[/. . ./]

[/THE PASSAGE GROWS DARK, DARKER YET DARK- [DATA LOST]/]

[/THE DARKNESS JUST KEEPS GROWING! THE SHADOWS CUTTING DEEPER INTO THE FABRIC OF- [error] -PHOTON READINGS HAVE- [error] -NEGATIVE- [error] -! //]

[/I DIDN'T THINK IT WAS POSSIBLE, THAT THIS WAS- [error] -BY PURSUING THIS [error] PASSAGE [error] -SPACETIME ITSELF, WE CAN TRULY- [error] -THE SURFACE! WE CAN FINALLY BE FREE!/]

[/[error], THIS NEXT EXPERIMENT SEEMS/]

[/VERY/]

[/VERY/]

[/INTERESTING./]

[/. . ./]

[/[ERROR, ALL FOLLOWING FILE CORRUPT]/]

The screen, with one final flicker, goes dark, revealing only archemedies horrified reflection in the cracked black glass. A spacetime passage…? The same passage that Archemedies and gaster had studied together for years? The same passage that they had classified far too dangerous, too unstable to ever test on? He steps back from the screen, his mind racing. Oh gaster- is that where you went? Was that your prison? He thinks, horror running up his spine. a deadzone between timelines? He thinks back, far far back into the past when he still knew color, and remembers his research on the void of all life they had found between worlds, the mass of eternal darkness they deemed would be best left alone. But of course, with him erased from existence, gaster…

Oh gaster, what did you do?


(AUTHOR NOTE: *evil author noises* )