(See the end of the work for more notes.)
Somewhere amidst the infinite swells and dips of the multiverse, what is basically a glorified toaster tumbles through time and space. It is not working well, and it’s operator has been steadily inventing new ways to say ‘work fuck dammit’ over the past six hours.
Inside of this machine — better known as “the inter dimensional portapotty” — Sans is currently face planted onto very cold, very hard, aluminum alloy. He got there through the usual parade of badly-orchestrated sins on the behalf of physics, that being; not working correctly. That or he miscalculated something, which he most certainly fucking did not. Sans knows the IDPs systems like the back of his hand — in fact he knows them so well, he could tell you with the upmost certainty that what his face is pressed to right now is a very high-tech contraption called ‘the floor.’ He could also tell you that most of the space above him is taken up by various AC systems keeping him from getting burnt, frozen, asphyxiating, or getting turned into a salamander, which did happen once.
Unfortunately, that takes up a lot of room. So, portapotty size it is, poor sans only barely able to cram himself in the blasted thing despite being an (admittedly very compact) skeleton. This is one of the few fathomable reasons his coworkers keep volunteering him to test it, and why he keeps ending up in these situations.
Gravity — unpredictable at the best of times — suddenly lurches again, and with a dull ‘ouf,’ sans finds himself flat on his back on what used to be the ceiling. He just shuts his eyesockets with a quiet groan, and waits patiently for the universe to stop whacking him around like a baseball. Please, can I just have a normal day for once? he wonders to himself, listening to the sounds of ten billion cuckoo-clocks flying by outside in the eldritch mess that is the raw timeline. Just once, once, can things not go batshit for me?
The universe responds to this plea by hitting him a home run.
The machine lets out an ear-smashing groan of protest, a huge wave of energy ricocheting through its straining systems. Gravity pitches and shatters, physics breaking somewhere along with it — Sans’ undignified yelp as he’s smacked back into the floor immediately drowned out by what must be every alarm in here. Red light floods the small space, and Sans struggles to push himself up — gravity doubles down onto his spine the moment he tries, forcing him to flop down again with a dull grunt.
“well,” sans remarks to no one, the alarms blaring loud enough to make his eyes water, “that - ouf - sounds like a no. ”
After a lot of banging, crashing, and general panic, he lands with an earth-shattering crash.
And then another.
And then a series of them, sans rattling around inside the IDP like a maraca bean as the ten-ton machine crashes through several layers of what he really, really hopes isn’t a building. Well, at least there’s no screams. Sans observes, unusually optimistic, even as his head bangs into a pipe for what must be the fortieth time.
Then, with a final clang-g-gg , the machine screeches to a halt.
Sans groans into the uncomfortable metal floor, alarms still stubbornly screeching at him.
“yeah, yeah, I get it, no need to scream…”
He sighs, wearily pushing himself up. He pops out a few kinks in his back, then checks the monitor to his left. He cringes, hard. Alright, that came off, that’s broken, that's on fire, and…hey, I thought I fixed that! Oh c’mon, I’m going to have to re-route almost everything through the freaking ceiling light! Sans sighs, shaking his skull — I’m a quantum physicist, not a miracle worker— before tapping away the clusters of error messages, deciding to just jump the gun and figure out where he is already.
He lifts his head, pulling himself up onto his tiptoes to look out of the little porthole on the door. Sans blinks wearily, registering the perfectly normal office outside — Piss-colored walls, gray cubicles…oh great, he’s crashed right into someone’s business.
If he has to try and explain time travel to some variant of the US government, again , sans swears he’s going to teleport himself off a cliff.
He shakes his skull, trying to clear it of the usual haze that accompanies being flung through time in a literal tin can. He’s gotta fix this thing and get back on track, after all… if I miss lunch the kid’ll be mad, and if I miss the check in… sans grimaces, imagining his fathers petrified face as the hours tick on with him not there. yeah, not lettin’ that happen a third time. Sans huffs about as determinedly as a monster can, and tries to straighten up without banging his head. He fails spectacularly, yelping as his skull rams against a pipe and rubbing the sore spot with an equally wounded expression. He rolls his aching shoulders, and feels his back pop satisfyingly loudly — Alright, first things first, he’s gotta fix whatever that thing was that was on fire, then hot-wire his way out of this mess.
Sans quickly crouches by one of the many sparking panels along the wall, prying it open with a well-practiced ease. His face is a mask of focus, sans rummaging through the technical bits while muttering to himself in his usual half-crazy way. He tends to be more ‘proactive’, as papyrus put it, these days — now that the resets are over, his dad is back from the brink of nonexistence, and the roughly two-thirds of his life that were erased from the records along with him are back too…well, needless to say he’s happier now. He’s got his family back, and damn if he isn’t going to at least try and be on time for once…
Sans is suddenly interrupted by a knock on his door. He lifts his head, squinting in the dim light. Nothing obscures the porthole, so he looks back down with a shrug, already fiddling with wires.
Another knock, more insistent this time.
Sans blinks, sets down the wires, and listens. A long, long pause….
knock…knock knock
Sans grins to himself, cracking his knuckles and straightening up. Alright then, first things first, joke contest. He straightens his lab coat, puns and knock-knocks alike already rummaging in his brain. Guess it’s gonna be one of those days! Hopefully a good, easy one of those days.
“aaand a who’s there?”
Sans replies jovially, pressing a small button to activate the intercom. He’s had a lot of random people, usually very vehement about something or other, knock/pound/try to kick down/sic a grenade on that door, sometimes in that order, and he finds telling a joke tends to break the ice. Or lava. In some universes those are very similar things!
“ HOW THE HELL DID YOU GET IN MY STORY!? ”
A very pretentious southern-Briton shrieks, and sans jumps out of his nonexistent skin — banging his head on the AC above him with a loud clang and landing with a louder thud. He groans as he rubs his skull, shooting the door a wounded look. That’s never happened before…well, apart from with that Wheatly guy, but he was more nervous than yelly. Sans, seeing an unusual lack of a face glaring in at him from the port hole, glances up at the ceiling in confusion, trying to figure out where that came from. It wasn’t even muffled, so how - ?
“ Stanley, knock harder, there must be somebody in there — I heard them! And you know my ears don’t lie, Stanley.”
The voice cries, and sans still can’t figure out which direction it’s coming from. It sounds like it’s in both of his — admittedly nonexistent — ears at once, unsettlingly all-encompassing. He absentmindedly scratches his skull as he thinks about this, humming in that way which is as close as he can get to frowning. Well, he knows he has no idea how this voice — possibly omnipresent? Yeesh, I hope not, i hate dealing with ‘deities’ — works, or why their words are appearing as text boxes in his head, but he gets a sinking feeling this is gonna take longer than it usually does.
Meanwhile, Stanley obediently knocks again.
The narrator continues shrieking in his ear as he raps his knuckles against the cool metal, the strange metal thing hulking before him. This feels weird. Stanley observes to himself, running his eyes over every inch of it with understandable curiosity, I’ve never seen this before. I thought I’d seen everything.
The machine looms over him, lopsided as a one-eared bunny, having sunk partially into the floor. Its weight cracks the concrete now showing through the once-gray carpet, and Stanley is suddenly very, very glad he was still in his office when it landed, otherwise he might’ve been hit by the various chunks of rubble now lying around them — most of which blasted out the ceiling, now sporting a gaping new hole. Stanley gazes curiously up at the singular dot of blue sky far above, distracted even as the little intercom on the machine buzzes to life again.
“heya, uh, don’t think ya got the joke. who's there? …or are you mxrs.howthehelldidyougetinmystory?”
Stanley jumps at the new voice, and whips his head around to stare at the little crackling speaker, immediately fascinated. Oooh, now that’s interesting. He leans closer despite the narrators angry ranting, peering at the small speaker. Could this be like the little tape machine in that one ending that scared him half to death? Or something else? There’s a little button by it, with some words next to it Stanley doesn’t bother to read — he just pushes the button on instinct, as he naturally assumes he’s always supposed to do. He’s still puzzled by that voice though. it certainly wasn’t the narrators, It sounded much different, almost lazy, but not…unfriendly. Kind of the exact opposite of the narrator, apart from the pitch. That thought puts Stanley on edge a bit — the narrator is, quite literally, everything he’s ever known, and when even he has a reason to be panicked, Stanley usually does too…
“ Stanley! Don’t you dare reply! Hold on, I’ll try and find the asset for this blasted contraption and -“
“uh, your pal there — he knows I can hear him, right?”
The new voice interrupts, and Stanley blinks. That’s to be expected, isn’t it? He can hear the narrator — whoever this new voice is, shouldn’t they be able to as well?
“ Oh, damn it — You’re not meant to! I am the voice of the Narrative, which you are certainly not a part of, you — you whoever-you-are!”
The narrator, however, seems to disagree with this. Stanley stares at the little speaker expectantly, awaiting the response. Perhaps this is a second narrator, a second voice to tell his story! Or maybe even a new story. Stanley grins at the thought — he would adore something new.
“well, I mean…I kinda do anyway. you’re, eh, pre -tty loud.”
The new voice comments nonchalantly, and the narrator makes any string of frustrated vowel sounds Stanley internally refers to as his ‘sputter of indignation.’ He starts rustling papers, and Stanley frowns reflexively. He almost never starts rustling, at least not when they’re doing an ending like this. Usually he only rustles when he’s trying to fix something, Stanley notes, and realizes the narrator does sound very upset by this, which is very abnormal, since Stanley had absolutely nothing to do with it. Stanley shoots a concerned look at the ceiling, focusing his thoughts on the machine — Didn’t you write this ending? Or is this already off script? He tries to ask, hoping the narrator will hear him. If so, that would be a first, but Stanley keeps trying anyhow.
“ Who are you!? I didn’t make you! And I certainly don’t recognize your voice from any of the staff, I was sure I — why can’t I find your asset!?”
The new voice just laughs over the intercom, and Stanley hears a little tapping sound. He looks up at the glass porthole at the top of the machine's hulking door, and sees a bony finger — no, a finger that’s just bones — tapping on the glass, before unfurling into a full skeleton hand, which waves at him.
Stanley waves back, unperturbed for the moment.
That sure is unusual, a little voice in the back of his head observes, the penny absolutely down-right refusing to drop.
“yeah, uh, I’m pretty sure you didn’t ‘make’ me. but there’s two o’you, right? Stanley, wasn’t it?”
Stanley blinks in surprise — huh. So new voice knows his name? He quickly nods, watching the porthole as the narrator begins muttering to himself like a conspiracy theorist on crack, presumably rustling through the parables many, many assets. Usually whenever he does that, things start turning magenta, but as far as Stanley can see everything looks normal right now. Which is, in and of itself, very odd. Stanley feels a prickle of concern, the hairs on the back of his neck standing pole-straight. If the narrator doesn’t know what’s going on, is the parable going to force-reset? Stanley may love the adventure line, but he hates the reset at the end, the wall, the buzzer, the narrator's panic…he doesn’t want that to happen again.
“quiet, arentcha? hopefully I ain’t talking to a wall. anyway, if y’are there, the door control broke in the crash, so if you could just pull the red cable that I’m sure is hangin’ out again…”
Stanley spots the red cable immediately, and before the narrator can stop him, obediently pulls it.
“Stanley, the one time you actually follow instructions and it has to be now!?”
The narrator shrieks as the door latch releases with a loud K-Chunk, a hiss of steam curling out from the edges. Stanley automatically steps back, and gets the sudden, floor-dropping-out-from-under-you sensation in his gut that he’s just made a mistake. He watches wide-eyed as the machine rumbles, the narrator practically whimpering in his ear as Stanley backs away, step by step. There’s a whir, a weird click-click-click noise, several chiptune boops, and then the lock poos and door finally begins to —
The edge of the door catches on something on its way, and stops with a pitiful scrape.
“stupid freakin’ budget iron, didn’t set properly - “
Comes the muffled voice, followed by a curse from inside, and after a couple of dull thuds, the door flies open with a clang.
Stanley leaps back in alarm as the door suddenly swings wide open as if it had never caught at all, a large cloud of smoke pluming from within. It billows through the office in stinging plumes, smelling of heat and asbestos, Stanley coughing silently, waving a hand in front of his face as he squints through the ashy haze. The new voice grumbles more incomprehensible profanity through occasional coughs, now accompanied by a dim blur of…a person? A person. Oh. FUCK. Stanley’s eyes widen, and he stumbles back, fear now the definite presence in his mind as the narrator begins rambling louder. He sounds like he’s slamming drawers open and shut and rustling through the contents, Stanley’s eyes flicking up to the ceiling in a silent plea for help, which goes unseen. A red light glows from inside the machine, shadows of wires shaking over the floor, the smoke pluming out as a shape emerges.
“oh, hey.”
Sans says, coughing one last time. A puff of smoke trickles out of his soot-stained button up, some stray wisps still leaving his sockets. This is, notably, very anticlimactic.
Sans blinks mildly up at the disgruntled-looking office worker before him, all wrinkled shirt and ruffled brown hair. He’s about double sans’s height, but that’s pretty standard, considering sans is…well, sans. He’s shaking, and slowly backing away, his eyes wide as dinnerplates, but that’s standard too, considering sans is, again, sans. Sans looks around briefly for whoever the other voice was, but, seeing nobody, shrugs and dismisses it in favor of saying his usual opener.
“so, uh, don’t scream, please.“
Sans asks, very nicely. Surprisingly, the office worker doesn’t scream — but the British voice from before certainly does. Sans jumps about a foot in the air at the sudden shrieking pressing into his ear canals, accompanied by the sound of somebody falling off their chair with a crash. Sans winces, hunching his bony shoulders and glancing around furtively for the source, but seeing absolutely nobody . Weird, he notes internally, what’s a lone human doing in an empty building? Don’t they work in units mostly?
Still, sans is used to people continually screaming around him by now, and quickly settles his nerves. He turns back to the office worker, not missing a beat even as the confused screeching continues in the background — yeesh, that guy is loud.
“hey, so, I know you’re freaked, n’ this is gonna sound stupid, but where is —” he waves to the ceiling, “y’know, him. I don’t see him anywhere.”
The small skeleton asks, cocking his head, still flawlessly ignoring the shrieking of the narrator. Stanley just stares, open mouthed, because even though he has no actual reason to be unnerved by the sight of a walking, talking, skeleton in crocs , he’s unnerved anyway. The skeletons' bony hands are shoved deep into the pockets of a beaten-looking lab coat, large eye sockets aglow with small white ovals that seem to be his eyes. Stanley, being Stanley, does not verbally respond to him — not quite knowing how — and just shakily gestures to the ceiling, still staring at the three-foot-five monsters general everything. He can’t remember anything before the parable, or the narrator, or any time he’d have learned what a skeleton is — but somehow he knows that they should not talk. Or wear shorts .
“yeah, you’re as lost as I am, arentcha…” The skeleton murmurs with a sigh, more a statement than a question. “…you’re the Stanley he was talkin to, right? i didn’t get that mixed up?”
The skeleton prompts gently, and Stanley just nods, fiddling nervously with his hands. Even though he’s double this skeletons size, he’s still incredibly unused to talking to anything or anyone face-to-face, and so is suffering from a mixture of social anxiety, general anxiety, understandable fear, and a chronic case of the heeby-jeebies. He is, again understandably, not in a great frame of mind.
“a’ight, cool. now, i get you're probably pretty confused, so I’ll just cut to the chase and explain right now, m’kay?”
The small skeleton asks, without moving his mouth at all, holding up two hands in a ‘calm’ gesture. Stanley just nods again, still twisting his hands nervously, leaning as far away from him as possible. The skeleton is seemingly not bothered by this, and continues anyway.
“y’know about time travel? like, the concept of goin’ from one time to another time?”
Sans prompts, and the office worker — Stanley — nods again. Alright, going good so far, even if the poor guy looks like he’s about to keel over. Well at least he’s reasonable, even if his omniscient buddy is…loud. Sans pauses, running his eyes over ‘Stanley’, assessing him. He's tall, but stands in that hunched sort of way where it’s obvious he doesn’t quite know what to do with all that height yet, hands close to his chest and constantly moving. It reminds him of how papyrus acts whenever he’s been freaked out by something, and Sans automatically feels ten times more sympathetic towards Stanley for this. Makes sense, sans thinks to himself, papyrus is the greatest guy there is.
“…well, that’s a real thing. I’m doing that, but I’m traveling from one time where I’m from, to a time in another place — not here. I didn’t mean to come here. still followin’ along?”
Again a nod. Despite constantly looking like he wants the earth to swallow him whole, this guy is probably the most reasonable he’s met yet! Sans rewards him with a slightly larger grin, and Stanley’s posture relaxes slightly. Alright, that’s one win, now to get him talking…or, well, communicating in some shape or form, at least.
“so, what I think happened, is I got knocked off course by…uh -“
Sans seems to lose track of his words, and shuts his eyesockets for a moment.
“look, mate, can you stop that? i’m tryina’ explain to your buddy Stanley here, n’ it’s pretty hard with your screeching in the background.”
Sans interrupts himself with an exasperated huff, shooting an pleading look at the ceiling. The pretentious voice from everywhere has been screaming — continuously — the entire time he’s been talking, and though sans is a pretty patient guy, it’s beginning to get annoying. Really annoying.
“ Wh - i - y-yuh-you- you’re DEAD! ”
The voice blubbers helplessly, and Sans just sighs, in a world-weary sort of way that tells you he’s had this conversation hundreds of times.
“yeah, like i haven’t heard that one bout’a billion times…”
Sans sighs to himself, rubbing the bridge of his nose in a halfhearted attempt to banish the headache now playing maracas inside his skull. He hates this topic with a passion, and there’s few things in this world sans really, actually hates. Humans seem to have this idea that being dead, or looking like something dead, and still being alive anyway is somehow unnatural. It gets on your nerves, being treated like a mistake, and sans doesn’t even have nerves to begin with!
“I’m sans, sans the skeleton, n’im very alive. i’d shake your hand, but you…uh, don’t seem to have any. care to explain that?”
Sans adds, trying to derail the conversation from that particular topic. Especially since, on top of all that, whether or not he actually does count as dead by human standards is a…controversial topic, scientifically.
“ Oh? Oh so I’M the one who needs to explain here!? HAH! I want an explanation out of you this INSTANT, young — s-skeleton-man!”
Sans blinks wearily at the ceiling for a moment, then glances to Stanley in a silent ‘ is he serious? ’ Sort of look.
“You know what? Nevermind, that’s it! I’m not putting up with this any longer, it’s bloody bizzare! Stanley, hold on, I’m resetting!”
Sans freezes, eyelights contracting to pricks, an instant before the world goes dark.
(Ah…Reset is a word the narrator probably should not have used…)