[Handplates chapter references: But why the curtain?, Now loading..., Do you want some rain for your parade?]

It was safe to say that both skeletons were buzzing with excitement and anticipation as they stood in front of the shed near their home.

They weren't lucky finding answers in this strange secret laboratory in Hotland but perhaps they would have more luck opening the last locked door of the house that they distinctively remembered as their home.

Sans and Papyrus exchanged a small glance before Sans reached for the key in his pocket again: "ready?"

"READY!", Papyrus nearly jumped from excitement but he tried to keep himself together for the sake of their mission.

"TOGETHER"

"together.", confirmed Sans and his brother put his hand onto his own, both of them guiding the key towards the lock.

With one satisfied click, it seemed to fit perfectly into the lock.

Now they only needed to turn it.

"one...", Sans felt his heart thudding wildly in his chest, both excited and scared to see what would be behind that door.

"TWO.", Papyrus's voice was slightly louder, a sign of his own nervousness and he tried his best to not let the impatience that resided within him to take over and just twist the key right then.

"THREE!", they exclaimed together finally, twisting the key in the lock.

They could hear it unlock and Papyrus reached for the handle, prying the door open with one swift and somewhat frantic move.

Their excitement dropped as they saw nothing but an empty room with pink-purplish tiles and faded blue walls.

It seemed like they had just opened the door to another dead end.

Sans's gaze nervously flicked to Papyrus.

Another setback would not do him well.

Sans himself was also disappointed, his heart dropping immediately as he let his eyes flicker across the disappointing emptiness of the room but he cared more about how his brother would feel about this.

There was a heavy silence in the room, Papyrus letting their findings, or not-findings, sink in with a frown as he looked around the room.

One could see the frustration edged into his face and his voice sounded disappointed as he spoke: "...I WAS EXPECTING SOMETHING COOLER."

"you're always expecting something cooler.", teased Sans, trying to distract from the actual problem and giving his brother a knowing smirk.

Papyrus only huffed in response, putting his hands on his hips and automatically bolstering up a little at that remark: "WELL, I AM A SKELETON WITH VERY HIGH EXPECTATIONS FOR LIFE!"

"i know. let's take a look around."

Sans stepped further in the room, towards the only thing or object that seemed to exist in this space.

Something big was positioned in the corner of the room.
It was covered by a giant curtain or blanket of some sort.

"huh, something behind this curtain....looks like some kinda machine.", he states as he moved the fabric aside carefully.

He wasn't exactly sure what he was looking at.

It looked like a computer, with a monitor and all but it had way more cables attached to it and it had a giant box beneath it that held multiple strange components and even more cables, all neatly wired and put together in some kind of organized way that probably only the builder would understand.

"IS IT A COMPUTER?"

"sorta, but....sorta something else too."

Sans was still eyeing the machine in front of them. Something about it felt or looked familiar but he could not put his finger on it.

He brought his hand up to his chin, trying to think hard about what this could mean - what this machine was made for - but suddenly got interrupted as Papyrus stepped up to him, holding what seemed to be a plastic card in his hands.

"LOOK, I FOUND A HARD CARD!"

"a what?"

The smaller skeleton carefully took the card from Papyrus, inspecting it a little with curious eyes.

"LOOK, IT'S A CARD! AND IT'S HARD.", Papyrus pointed out as Sans turned the card to the front, where the writing would be.

"oh, it's an id badge. For...no one. huh."

Papyrus had already rushed up to the workspace, eyeing a giant blueprint: "WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THIS?"

"looks like blueprints to me.", Sans shrugged and stepped up to the blueprint, trying to make sense of whatever the writing and sketches on it meant.

"WELL, OBVIOUSLY. THEY'RE BLUE AND HAVE PRINT! CAN YOU READ ANY OF IT?"

The sketch itself revealed basically nothing of what this is about and the text and notes that were written on it seemed to be incomplete or smudged.

It was impossible to figure out what these were for or what use they would have.

Sans huffed lightly, finally deciding to give up on trying to read any out of this thing.

It started to give him a headache: "nah...i think some of it's missing."

Papyrus groaned in response, not satisfied with that answer: "EVERYTHING IS ALWAYS MISSING PARTS. I FOR ONE AM TIRED OF IT, SANS!"

"i hear ya."

"WELL...NOW WE'VE FINALLY SEEN EVERY ROOM IN THE HOUSE! IT TRULY IS OURS NOW."

"yeah, guess so. what should we do with this room?"

"HMM...I DON'T KNOW. WE ALREADY HAVE BEDROOMS. ARE THERE OTHER NORMAL ROOMS PEOPLE HAVE?"

"some people have work rooms."

"OH LET'S MAKE IT A WORK ROOM THEN! HOW DOES THAT SOUND?"

"i can roll with it."

Papyrus smiled at that, satisfied with Sans's answer: "GREAT! NOW THAT THAT'S ACCOMPLISHED, LET'S GET SOMETHING TO TEA!
I HAVE HAD AN EXTREMELY LONG PERIOD OF TIME DOING THINGS!"

"a long day.", Sans corrected Papyrus as he clearly struggled to describe how today went.

"YES, THAT. COME ON! WE'RE NOT GOING TO GRILLBY'S."

"aw. but it'd put your mind at gr-ease.", Sans replied, chuckling to himself about that pun.

In response, Papyrus let out a small, annoyed 'ugh'.

"ALTHOUGH, AT LEAST THAT ONE HAD A LITTLE EFFORT...COME ON!"

~💙~

Ever since they had unlocked this extra room, their work room, things felt...different.

One time when Sans went to get some food out of the fridge at night (because he was sleeping for way too long throughout the day again), he swore he something [s/c] flickering in the corner of his eye, seeming to disappear into the room.

Sans had blamed his tiredness for it. That it was dark and perhaps his mind was playing tricks on him but it almost felt like whatever that was became more persistent.

He felt a strange pull towards the room with the weird machine and he could not figure out why.

Papyrus had reported that he somehow felt the same way about it and they both started wondering what they actually saw.

Why was it that particular color...? And strangely enough, why did it seem to be the exact same glow, the exact same shade as the flower from the box that they had brought from the lab?

Was there some kind of connection to it?

Sans could no longer let this rest, he had to know. He had to understand.

So when Papyrus was out with Undyne, he had decided to do some digging in the various cardboard boxes that the siblings had stored away in a closet.

He sat on the ground, half of his body practically inside the box as he searched through the various papers and clutter within the box.

He was searching for a way to get the computer working which seemed to be corrupted or broken in some way.

"there's got to be some way to get that thing working...", he mumbled to himself, his voice muffled due to the cardboard.

"maybe it's just the boot sequence that's corrupted...? there has to be something around here that'll work..."

His gloved fingers finally hit the bottom of the box, grazing a bigger flat surface of plastic and pulled it out.

The item turned out to be a zip drive with the label BOOT DISK on it.

"bingo.", exclaimed Sans and scurried to his feet, not caring about the mess he left behind on the floor.

He entered the work room and sat down on the chair, sliding the drive into its assigned slot and pressing the power button of the machine.

The machinery and its components started humming to life from within and Sans's eyes nervously darted to the monitor.

He held his breath as he waited for anything to spark to life and after a couple of seconds, the screen flickered, writing out that the booting sequence had been initiated in a green, blocky font.

"now, we're talking-", Sans stopped himself as the screen suddenly flickered to a blue one, a small white box hovering in the center of it.

𝙿𝚊𝚜𝚜𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚍, it read, the cursor impatiently fading in and out.

It was almost as if it was mocking him.

Another roadblock.

"right. a password. hmm...", Sans was bummed, thinking to himself for a moment.

Of course, the owner of this thing had a password.
It could take him forever to figure out what it would be.

He just randomly started typing in whatever words would pop up in his mind.

"snowdin?" 𝙸𝚗𝚟𝚊𝚕𝚒𝚍 𝙿𝚊𝚜𝚜𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚍.

"underground?" 𝙸𝚗𝚟𝚊𝚕𝚒𝚍 𝙿𝚊𝚜𝚜𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚍.

Frustrated, Sans leaned back into the chair and groaned.
He kicked himself off the device, the tires of the office chair squeaking slightly as he rolled backwards and stared down the password window.

"it's got to be something...whoever owned this house- our house, before we did...what would they make their password...? there has to be a way to..."

As Sans leaned forward to reach for the soda that he had gotten himself, he watched from the corner of his eye how a [s/c] spark erupted from the screen.

Suddenly, the entire monitor flickered in that color for a moment before it switched back to the password window and he could watch, letter by letter, how a password was being entered.

His eyes widened in shock, but he had barely time to react, instead, memorizing the password for future use.

The password was accepted, the window suddenly changing into a small loading screen before the main page appeared in front of him.

"huh, ok...strange. but as long as it works."

Sans's eyes trailed across the screen, frowning: "huh, not much on here...guess it wasn't used for much."

His eyes landed on a particular file. "'fs-tml-mon.exe'...? hmm..."

Sans clicked on the file, a small warning window popping up:

𝙿𝚛𝚒𝚖𝚊𝚛𝚢  𝚂𝚘𝚞𝚛𝚌𝚎  𝙾𝚏𝚏𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚎

𝙿𝚛𝚘𝚐𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚜𝚒𝚗𝚐  𝙿𝚘𝚠𝚎𝚛  𝙸𝚗𝚜𝚞𝚏𝚏𝚒𝚌𝚒𝚎𝚗𝚝  𝙵𝚘𝚛  𝙵𝚞𝚕𝚕  𝚁𝚎𝚗𝚍𝚎𝚛

It quickly disappeared again and rows and rows of numbers started to pop up on the screen in a list.

"what is this...", mumbled Sans to himself, trying to make sense of whatever was on the monitor in front of him.

It was confusing to say the least, but perhaps this document would shed light on some of their questions.

Maybe they would finally get the answers they've been looking for but for that, he had to understand what was going on in front of him.

"numbers, numbers...what do they mean...? is there a guide somewhere or something...? no help menu..."

Sans leaned in even closer, his finger gliding across the screen as he inspected each and every one of them.

"cmon, think. it's going through a set of numbers sequentially...all the lines marked negative are less than one...the last value changes, so it must be evaluating each number on the left for...something.
and if it's greater than one, it's positive...but what is it looking at? what is it looking for?"

Unconsciously, Sans brought his hand to his chin, thinking hard.

It was a tough thing to crack but he would definitely try.

For his sake. And his brother's.

He thought about the numbers he could see in monsters and tried to remember the patterns that he used to see.

"these don't match up to monster numbers...what other numbers could they be...? there has to be some kind of index on here somewhere..."

As the skeleton wanted to click through the files to search for another clue, a harsh noise erupted from the machine and the entire screen flickered into blue, showing a mess of scrambled code and garbled signs.

"ugh, file's corrupted....maybe something in it survived..."

He scanned the text carefully, despite the weird scrambling of the numbers kind of gave Sans a headache.

He could read something about 𝚊 𝚖𝚊𝚙, 𝚊 𝚐𝚛𝚒𝚍 and that the 𝚍𝚎𝚏𝚒𝚗𝚎𝚍  𝚟𝚊𝚕𝚞𝚎𝚜  𝚏𝚊𝚕𝚕  𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚘  𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚎 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚌𝚊𝚗 𝚋𝚎  𝚊𝚗𝚊𝚕𝚢𝚣𝚎𝚍,  𝚎𝚊𝚌𝚑  𝚊𝚛𝚎𝚊 𝚊 𝚗𝚞𝚖𝚋𝚎𝚛...whatever all of that really meant.

"maybe places have numbers too...? how much stuff has numbers? render, it said something about render...got it."

𝚆𝙰𝚁𝙽𝙸𝙽𝙶! 𝚃𝙷𝙴𝚁𝙴 𝙸𝚂 𝙰 𝙷𝙸𝙶𝙷 𝚁𝙸𝚂𝙺 𝙾𝙵 𝚂𝚈𝚂𝚃𝙴𝙼 𝙳𝙰𝙼𝙰𝙶𝙴 𝙸𝙵 𝚁𝚄𝙽 𝚆𝙸𝚃𝙷𝙾𝚄𝚃 𝙿𝚁𝙸𝙼𝙰𝚁𝚈 𝚂𝙾𝚄𝚁𝙲𝙴 𝚂𝚄𝙿𝙿𝙾𝚁𝚃!

𝙰𝚁𝙴 𝚈𝙾𝚄 𝚂𝚄𝚁𝙴 𝚈𝙾𝚄 𝚆𝙰𝙽𝚃 𝚃𝙾 𝙲𝙾𝙽𝚃𝙸𝙽𝚄𝙴?

𝚈/𝙽

.

.

.
𝚈/𝙽

.

.

.

𝚁𝙴𝙽𝙳𝙴𝚁𝙸𝙽𝙶 𝙲𝚄𝚁𝚁𝙴𝙽𝚃 𝚃𝙸𝙼𝙴𝙻𝙸𝙽𝙴 𝙵𝚁𝙾𝙼 𝙴𝚇𝙸𝚂𝚃𝙸𝙽𝙶 𝙳𝙰𝚃𝙰...

The sentence made Sans perk up: "current timeline...?"

He leaned in closer, trying to make sense of it as another window popped up.

𝚆𝙰𝚁𝙽𝙸𝙽𝙶!
𝚂𝚈𝚂𝚃𝙴𝙼 𝚃𝙴𝙼𝙿𝙴𝚁𝙰𝚃𝚄𝚁𝙴 𝙷𝙰𝚂 𝙴𝚇𝙲𝙴𝙴𝙳𝙴-

The screen shut off and so did the fans within the machine itself, a sudden pop erupting from within and smoke poured out of the back.

The smell of burnt plastic filled the air and Sans panicked, his heart pounding wildly in his chest as he attempted to press a couple of buttons on the keyboard: "no no no, come on! come on!"

He sounded desperate, his eyes flickering from his hands moving across the keyboard to the monitor ever so often in hopes that the computer would perhaps come back to life.

When nothing happened, Sans frowned, facepalming himself for doing something so idiotic.

Of course this would happen.

They never got lucky so far, so why would things work out in their favor now?

He sighed, looking down until he suddenly saw that the zip drive had ejected itself.

He quickly pulled it out of the slot, weighing it in his hand and thinking about what his next move should be.

~💙🧡~

"OH THERE YOU ARE, SANS! WERE YOU HAVING FUN IN THE WORKROOM?", Papyrus greeted him immediately as Sans pushed open the door.

He was standing in the middle of the room, a white apron over his casual clothes that consisted of a gray shirt and some dark trousers.
He always wore it when he was cooking with Undyne.

The apron itself had a print of some spaghetti and meatballs on a skateboard and wearing sunglasses.
Over that, it said COOLSKETTI in bold letters.

Papyrus was beaming, undoing the knot and putting away the apron.

"...uh, yeah...sure..."

"THAT'S GREAT! OH SANS I HAD THE BEST DAY TODAY!
I HAVE SOME VERY GOOD SUGGESTIONS ABOUT PUZZLE MAINTENANCE TO UNDYNE, WHICH SHE WAS VERY INTERESTED IN, AND!
WE HAD A VERY INTENSE COOKING LESSON WHERE MOST OF THE KITCHEN DID NOT BURN DOWN!

THE LADY AT THE INN GAVE ME A LOLLIPOP, AND I SAW SOME VERY NICELY ARRANGED BOOKS AND OH, SANS!
EVERYTHING'S COMING UP PAPYRUS!"

"huh...?", Sans asked, clearly confused about the last part of his sentence.

Papyrus moved towards his brother with quick, long strides and suddenly picked him up: "IT'S A PHRASE I LEARNED FROM ONE OF THE TEENAGERS!
EVERYTHING'S BEEN SO WONDERFUL TODAY!
EVERYTHING!"

Papyrus continued to muse, spinning around with Sans in his arms in pure joy.
But this joy, the same optimism, did not reach Sans.

As Papyrus sat him back down and hugged his older brother close to his chest, Sans could not bring himself to return the hug.
He just stood there motionlessly as he continued to go over the discoveries he had made in his head.

"everything...", he mumbled into Papyrus's shirt.

"I'M SO HAPPY! TODAY HAS BEEN PERFECT!
IF EVERY DAY COULD BE LIKE TODAY, THEN I'D BE THE HAPPIEST SKELETON IN THE UNDERGROUND, AS WELL AS THE TALLEST AND THE MOST HANDSOMEST!
I CAN'T BELIEVE IT, BUT YOU WERE RIGHT!
WE DON'T NEED TO REMEMBER ANYTHING AT ALL!
EVERYTHING CAN BE WONDERFUL JUST AS WE ARE!"

Yes, Sans did say that but now....it felt so absurd. Could he actually let go of his past?
Does he really want to?
In which direction would it be better to turn?

Now that Sans had something to work with, something solid that could give them the answers that he so desperately needed, he wasn't sure if he wanted to just not remember.

"right...right, yeah. definitely.", Sans mumbled, the turmoil inside of him clearly visible as his eye sockets started to dim.

Papyrus could not see it happening, rubbing his cheek against the top of Sans's skull with cheerful obliviousness.

He let go of Sans and turned away, head towards the kitchen while Sans remained glued to the ground, staring at his feet.

"DID YOU GET A LOT DONE IN THE WORK ROOM?
I'VE BEEN DOING A LOT IN THE KITCHEN! I MADE A QUICHE!
IT'S ALMOST DONE, WE JUST HAVE TO WAIT FOR THE FLAMES TO GO OUT!", he exclaimed.

Sans let out a soft sigh, recomposing himself: "uh yeah."

His heart was heavy but within a moment, it seemed like it was all gone.
Whatever was weighing on his mind was pushed away and one could watch Sans crack a playful smile, winking at his brother: "uh...i did a skele-ton, heh."

Papyrus groaned from the kitchen and rushed back to his brother.

With an exasperated huff, Papyrus seized the smaller skeleton's head, his fingers tightening around the top of his skull.

In one swift motion, he pushed down, forcing Sans to hunch under the pressure: "SANS!! DON'T SPOIL MY GOOD MOOD WITH YOUR AWFUL JOKES!"

Sans chuckled in response, standing back up again as his brother let go of him: "wouldn't..."

He was about to say another pun but decided against it, following Papyrus into the kitchen.

"dream of it, bro. heh.."