Chapter Text
By the time you and your datemate have finished round three, you both agree it’s probably a good time to properly eat some dinner and figure out the rest of your evening. The mechanics of Red’s magic on your SOUL becomes a major topic of conversation all the way through bedtime. There’s no real consensus on exactly what’s happening, given that Red uses his magic this way on pretty much anything from animate to nonanimate and he never gets this kind of feedback, which really makes this seem like it’s a you-specific phenomenon. You ask him if it’s anything like the SOUL-sharing cultural uh.. thing he’s mentioned before, and he says that he doesn’t know for sure (unsurprisingly, given his distrusting nature, he’s never actually tried that particular engagement with anyone), but he imagines that SOUL sex is probably along the same lines.
Right.
SOUL sex.
That certainly isn’t an appealing concept to you, a person who desperately desires that kind of intimacy with someone.
If you had to guess, you’d hazard that your own SOUL has reservations, but the idea of you and him in such a way—the image of his white, inverted heart meshed with whatever upright green is yours–is a brainworm you’re not going to be rid of until you actually do it, so you’re boxing that thought away as horny fodder that will inevitably pop up at inconvenient times and turn your cheeks an unnecessary shade of scarlet. At least you have experience with those situations.
The next day, you’re back in your lab and itching to get back into Red’s. You spend some hours playing with your project, which has plenty of grip on your attention—the time-crystal functions are finally cooperating thanks to Red’s advice—but you’ve got SOULs doing cartwheels in the back of your head. You kind of… miss them? Maybe you’ve humanized them a bit–okay a lot–but they were humans, weren’t they? And though they can’t speak, it still feels like you have conversations with them (given that the conversations are purely about the very core of their being and all else on an existential level and communicated only through abstract feelings). In any case, you have this innate drive to find out more about them, and no better way than to do more tests, more studies–with Red’s permission of course. The scientist in you is ready to (metaphorically) dissect them into their basic components and stitch them back together with fascination and understanding.
You hear a patterned tapping at the door with a smugly-stated ‘knock knock’ and a grin develops between your cheeks. Swiveling in your seat, you hop off and approach the door.
“Who is it?”
“momentum eigenfunction.”
You snort on your side of the lab, thrown by the quantum term. Momentum eigenfunction? As in a wave function that describes a particle possessing definite momentum? How the fuck is Red going to turn this into a knock knock joke? You tentatively answer.
“Momentum eigenfunction… who?”
“gimme a momentum and eigenfunctionally 𝒫opư𝑝 over there.”
You nearly keel over as he suddenly transforms one side of the eigenvalue equation for momentum space wave function into a pun relevant to his shortcutting abilities. As you’re momentarily trying to find the space to breathe, there’s a tap on your shoulder that turns your laughter into a shrill screech of joyous fear as you turn and find your datemate with the smugliest grin you’ve ever seen, clearly proud of himself.
“been workin’ on that one fer a while.”
“I legitimately had no idea how you were going to pull it off. That was brilliant.”
“i know, i’m pretty enlightening.”
At this rate, you’re going to pass out from an overclocked diaphragm–cause of death: puns, and the joke’s on you. Red takes advantage of your laughing fit.
“speakin’ of bright lights, i was wonderin’ if ya wanted ta come back over and try somethin’ new?”
You finally calm down, the prospect of more SOUL investigation too tempting to turn down. “I suppose I could be persuaded.”
Red chuckles and leads you out your lab door—he bothers to walk you this time instead of paradoxing you through time and space—and over to his own lab. It looks just about the same as before, except this time you only see one covered glass container on the lab bench.
“Just one?”
“mm. i wanna make sure there’s zero interference from anything else, y’know?” Oh, fair. Isolated variables are important for conducting good research. “was thinkin’ we could try some other angles. have a workin’ theory about how yer accessing magical energy, but need ta test out a few methods of transfer to confirm. gotta warn ya, though, it’s uh–”
‘Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!’
The skin nearly pops off your bones as a line from a Monty Viper skit starts sounding on repeat from Red’s general direction. You see him pull out his cell phone from his pocket and mutter a grumpy ‘you’ve gotta be shittin’ me’. While you’d love to ask more about him being an indulger of peak British comedy, you focus in on his exasperation.
“Is everything okay?”
His eye lights pop back up to yours and his grin relaxes into casual ease.
“yep. jus’ gotta take care of somethin’ real quick. hold down the fort fer me, will ya?” Before you can answer, he presses a toothy kiss to your cheek like some married partner move that sends flutters to your oh-so-incredibly weak heart, and is gone from sight the moment you recover.
Welp, déjà vu. Where is he going anyway? Was that a call? An alarm on his phone? Did he leave the stove on at home? Hopefully everything’s okay. You could ask him about it when he comes back.
….And in the meantime, you can be a little more nosy about Red’s lab stuff, since he let you in and all. You silently promise not to touch anything and make your way to a table at the left, the one with scattered papers marked with old coffee stains and gridlines. The white board is still full of equations, but it must have been reworked because there’s smudging in some places. You figure it’s for his thesis project in some way or another, but notably you don’t see any recognizable variables or functions. Huh. You stare for a moment or two before considering that the papers on the table might explain some of the mathematical work.
Although the papers on the table appear to be in chaotic disarray, you realize that there’s some method to the madness. Sections of the table have relevant project pieces that are separate from other sections. In the first you see a string of graphs on long pieces of paper, not unlike the kind that tracks lie detection or seismic activity. As the graphs simply track waves and disturbances, there are no axis labels, but you do find that each one seems to have a date or date range with timestamps noted somewhere on the page. You wonder if Red might’ve been studying earthquakes down in the Underground—the apparently-real lava pit mentioned in the BnB game suddenly comes to mind—but the dates are recent, within the last few weeks. He can teleport up to fifty miles at a time, so he says. Maybe he’s been making trips over there? Given no other information, you remain baffled and move onto the next section of papers.
This pile is more detailed than the wave pattern graphs, but somehow makes even less sense. Now that you’re looking, it seems like there’s a number of computer chips or motherboards or… whatever—you’re a software techie, not a hardware techie—that are spread over various pages of carefully-measured drawings and schematics for… something. Something metal, it seems. The shape doesn’t appear to be definite as it’s still going through the early stages, with various options available in pyramidal, cuboidal, and trapezoidal formats. There’s a note on one of the sheets that simply says 'refine actuator'-as if you know what the hell an actuator is.
The last mess of papers is actually more organized than the rest, though perhaps that’s accounting for the fact that there are fewer of them as a bunch of crumpled up pages have made hearth and home on the lab room floor. There’s a large blue cutting mat on the table that’s been well-worn with sharp scratches. The papers that haven’t been discarded to the floor all detail a conically-shaped pod equipped with solar panels, radio antennae, a long cylindrical tube with a massive aperture and thick glass—
WAIT.
You reach out and thumb through the drawings eagerly, finding one fully-labeled, including a title.
‘space module and reflecting telescope’
The supplemental image has mechanics included for boosters.
This is Red’s actual rocketship design!! The one he told you about the night you spent under the stars (well, mostly in your bed). The blueprints go into the specific measurements of each part of the structure, and there’s a post-it note that catches your eye.
'ask alph about robo stuff'
Something clicks in your brain. You move back over to the previous pile, examining the strange drawings a bit more closely. Could this be the nascent prototype design for a space-piloting robot? Or is this something else? You lift some pages carefully and discover something hidden beneath the leaves. When you pull it from its paperly casket, you find a tiny, metal rocketship-telescope model sitting in the palm of your hand.
You couldn’t be more in awe.
“see somethin’ good sweetcheeks?”
You startle and fumble the small bit of metal, just barely saving it from a space trip to the floor.
“R-Red!” This guy is very good at catching you off-guard. “Sorry. I… I was–”
The little model lifts from your hands and floats between you, silencing the rest of your muddled words. Red twirls it in midair for show.
“i was gonna show ya once i worked out all the kinks. ‘sides i still need a reliable pilot i don’t gotta check every minute of the day.”
He doesn’t seem upset that you were nosing around, so your shoulders relax and you reach out towards the model, your hand hovering beneath it in awe. “You’ve put so much work into this.”
There’s so much investment, so much passion. But then it makes sense, doesn’t it? Here’s your datemate, a monster who lived underground his whole life until a year ago. It speaks to the kind of person that he is. Even if he had given up, even if he had come to terms with a fate without a rising sun, he had ideas–he had dreams. And his dreams didn’t stop merely at a clear blue sky.
They shot beyond the earth’s horizon and into the stars
Red turns his head, cheekbones dusted crimson. “s’just the start, really. i… didn’t work on it much until recently.”
He… didn’t? Well…
Your smile brightens with admiration. “Then I’m impressed with how much progress you’ve made in such little time.”
Red peeks over at you, scanning your face, and then huffs into a relaxed grin. “i’ll tell ya more about it when i’ve actually got somethin’ ta show. in the meantime, i’ve got somethin’ else fer ya.”
The model swings back over to the messy table and you suddenly remember the reason he brought you here. The glass container sits invitingly on the table, and you nod eagerly as Red leads you over to it.
“like i was sayin’ before… i gotta be upfront with ya.”
He pulls the white cloth from the unit, revealing a beautiful, glowing SOUL.
…A beautiful glowing purple SOUL.
Oh.
“six.” Red shoves his hands into his pockets. “there’s a total of six human SOULs i’ve got from the underground.”
You nod, upping the little human kill counter in your head from four to six, then immediately juxtaposing it to your memory of Taylor’s kill count of one-hundred and eleven. What you remember of Sans’ isn’t much, but that his level is higher than Taylor’s—which has its own implications. You treat everything as facts, simply logging the numbers for later. You have your priorities though.
“What’s their name?”
“val.” Red carefully brings them out of their unit and onto the lab bench. “they’re not a monad, but they’d might as well be. mostly jus’ perseverance.”
‘Perseverance’. The word intrigues you. The ones you know–justice, patience, kindness, and integrity–all have pretty self-explanatory ideas, as far as you’re concerned, but this one doesn’t seem inherently obvious.
“What are perseverance types like?”
Red considers this for a moment. “logical. analytical. curious. they’re more likely to stop ‘n think, consider all the options before taking action. play it safe.” He looks over to the SOUL, then rubs the back of his cervicals. “thought we could just start with the basics before gettin’ inta anythin’ more complicated.”
You think about it. You’re pretty sure ‘basics’ just means getting close to Val the way you got close to the other SOULs before, but you wonder if that’s the best approach. It might be best to catalogue what you know first. Right– so the phenomenon you are experiencing with SOUL interaction is producing a result that looks like magic—ooh, fascinating framing of the thought… is it magic? Likely, but technically unconfirmed. On that train of thinking, if it is magic, Red mentioned it would probably be magic within the SOUL, which everyone has. You know that humans used magic long ago to seal the monsters into the Underground–that means that humans must have been able to use magic somehow, right? The method is unclear, but if magic inherently exists in the SOUL, then in theory, human mages—mages! wow!—had some way to access it or otherwise channel other sources of magic to–
“dollface?”
You perk up, suddenly aware that you’ve just gone on a mental parade down theory lane. “S-Sorry, yes.” On second thought, ‘basics’ would mean establishing a baseline, as you’d done previously. As long as it doesn’t impact future interactive attempts, it should be sound. You take a step forward and Red steps back, ensuring there’s enough space for him not to interfere with the–oh!
“Wait, Red–what if you being here makes a difference?”
Red looks at you, puzzled. “whaddya mean?”
“Well, I’m not sure exactly how it works for you, but I remember you said you take in magic ambiently and through other means, and by the conservational law of energy, you must be expelling it from your system somehow–unless you’re storing it somewhere?”
“..it’s both.”
“Right. So if you’re somehow emitting magic, we should make sure that you’re not a variable in the equation. Obviously we’d still need to account for the channeling of ambient magic if that’s what’s occurring, but this will help narrow things down too.”
Your idea merits you a tentative grimace. “i dunno cupcake, i thought we already ruled that out since i’m not affected by any of it.”
“Not in any currently discernable way, no, but you might still be powering the interaction.” He continues to hesitate and you study his bones, then quickly form a hypothesis. “You’re worried about leaving me alone with Val exposed.”
A sigh. “not ‘cause i think you’ll do anything, but what if something happens and i’m not here, y’know?”
“Hm. A fair point. But I think it’s more likely that nothing would happen if you’re not here, no?”
Red rubs his metacarpals along his face, staring tiredly at your chest. “alright, but i’ll be back in fifteen seconds, y’hear? fifteen seconds.”
You nod in understanding. “Fifteen seconds.”
“right.”
And the moment he pop!s away—god you'd really like to understand the mechanics of his teleportation on a visceral level–you step up to Val hovering quietly over the table. You're close enough in comparison to the others that you should feel something–
–and you do.
Clarity.
The culmination of every possible thought that was and could be–a map of connections like neural highways signaling to one another in organized structure, beams that steady and support and branch like specialized webs holding information, knowledge, to then act foundationally as the basis for all questions, all unknowns in the universe. With this level of ordered form, everything has an answer. You reach out your hands as if able to sense the beautiful lines you envision, that you feel. And honestly, it gives you a really interesting thought.
“time's up sugar. ya feel any–”
It takes you a moment to realize that Red has stopped mid-sentence. When you turn your head to confirm or deny your theory that he may have disappeared, you find him standing right where you would have expected, staring at you with your outstretched arms. Odd.
“I think it works whether or not you're here, so we can officially rule you out as a source of power, unless you're leaving behind some sort of magical residue.”
Red shakes his head and comes to. “nothin’ that’d be anythin’ more powerful than ambient magic, i don’t think.”
“Great.”
“what the hell is goin’ on here.”
“Hm? Oh, well, nothing visual as far as I can tell, but there’s something interesting internally–it’s like I can sense Val’s structural organization? Or maybe my own? I haven’t figured out the locus of origin, but it got me thinking.” You smile surely, with confidence.
“Have you ever tried to look at the quantum properties of SOULs?”
Red blinks from his skeptical curiosity into an instantaneous ‘what the absolute fuck’ that cocks one browbone and widens his sockets. “you… what?”
Ah, you’ve lost him. You’ll have to take him through your thought process step-by-step. “I imagine you already have some understanding of the actual structures that make up SOULs. Even if they’re made of light and magic, something must be creating their form, which I presume means they are composed of some elementary building block.”
“...yeah i mean, yer not wrong…”
You beam brightly. “So given that basis, wouldn’t it be worth investigating them on a quantum level?”
Red scratches the top of his skull, considering. “i… honestly never even thought ta do that. i guess it’s worth a shot? i dunno that yer not gonna get any photonic or magical interference though.”
“Precisely–we have no idea! I’d just like to try it out. Do you have a laser here we could use to create a basic pulse?”
“... not uh… here.”
Ah. Somewhere else then? No matter. You step away from Val to speak more forwardly. “Can we bring Val over to my lab then? I have a fairly stable setup there.”
Your skeleton looks like he’s going through about twelve different stages–of what, you’re not entirely sure. The emotion is hard to pinpoint, but the bones around his eyes have creases like he’s been aged twenty-thousand years.
“... alright, we can do it. it’s good to go, right?”
“Yep.”
“okay.”
Red shuffles Val back into the container and with a quick shortcut, the three of you are in your lab. You waltz over to your state-of-the-art laser and gesture. “I was thinking we’d use the semi-conductor diode over the microwave lasers, but it could be worth it to try both.”
“one at a time, flash. diode’s a good start.” Your smile turns guilty as Red teases your obvious excitement with a punny moniker. Val fits neatly on the stand some feet away and you ready the laser, checking the settings and tuning it to an appropriate output for Val’s spectral range. You grab some safety glasses, unsure if Red actually needs them or not, but better safe than sorry-with-permanent-eye-damage. He wordlessly takes a set when you offer.
With a deep breath you brace yourself…
…and turn it on.
The effects are near-immediate.
The purple heart… no longer looks like a heart, taking on a nebulous shape, some odd lava lamp-like blob. Before you can panic about the structural integrity of Val’s SOUL–and remind yourself that the glass dampener should prevent the laser from doing any actual damage–the heart-shape reforms, glowing brightly and oscillating the way it normally does as it hovers.
… Huh.
Oscillating.
“well that's fuckin' weird.”
You rush over to your computer and open up an associated application.
“doll?”
“I’m checking the sensors. I have a theory.”
Red teleports behind you, looking over your shoulder. “what kinda theory?”
The application—the loading time of which tries your shallow wells of patience—pulls up two graphs of continuous data tracking magnetizations over time. The first has a helix that criss-crosses every thirty-point-two milliseconds. The second has the same helix but stretched out so that it loops every sixty-one-point-one milliseconds.
Which is basically twice as long.
“Sans.” Your eyes are wide and full of wonder. “The subharmonic response of the elements in Val’s SOUL are double the period of what we’d expect for the driving force of the laser. I’d have to apply the Fast Fourier Transform to check the actual frequency peaks and obviously we’d need to test the rigidity of the system to confirm, but if this is in fact the lowest-energy state… this strongly implies that either we moved Val’s SOUL into a time crystal state, or that SOULs are in fact, naturally, time crystals.”
“whoa, wait, hold on a sec.” Red studies the graphs carefully. “yer sayin’ that fer every two laser pulses, the particles in val flip spins once instead of twice.”
“Yes! And the glow is interesting too. There’ve been studies on photonic time crystals, which exhibit sudden refractive index changes in one optical cycle. If they’re causing nearby particles to emit light and then they amplify that light wave, that would explain the intensity of the SOUL glow.”
“okay that sounds good, but ya need the evidence fer it. besides, what’s it even mean if SOULs are ‘naturally-occurring time crystals’?”
“Well there's the structural makeup for one thing, which could explain why SOULs move up and down a little bit, even at rest. It's also an oscillating system, so it could be a method for how information passes between SOUL particles on a fundamental level. It would be really interesting if there were memory within SOULs, because you'd have a solid foundation for storing that information. Besides that, I don't know what the mechanism is for magical energy and how that could be interacting with the system–for all we know it could be the driving force, like the laser, plus there are other quantum concepts that could be at play like superposition or entanglement. There's a whole unexplored quantum world here.”
Red is not a layman here–he’s on your level, probably even above it, which means he understands what you’re saying, you know he’s putting three-and-two together and the gears are spinning into infinity and he has that odd quirk on his face that tells you he’s seeing the potential.
“superposition would explain why it’s so hard ta actually map out the virtues.”
“Have you ever tried running a spectrum from the same locus twice?”
“yeah, and sometimes ya get results that are close, but other times there’s a significant difference.”
“I would bet they’re exhibiting wave function properties, which is why your results aren’t consistent.”
“ho-ly shit, ya might actually be onto something there sugarti–shit!”
You startle, but you're not sure if it's because of the sudden expletive, the sound of the lab door slowly unlocking, or because Red just got more than halfway through calling you sugartits.
Wait, the sound of the lab door unlock–?
You turn around and see your advisor shuffling into your lab in that slow, casual way of his. When he sees you, he blinks, seemingly surprised by something, then greets you in a relaxed yet jolly way.
“Hey guys.”
“Hi Dr. Mass.”
“I was just coming over to check in and see how you're doing on your project.” He gestures over to you with some papers in his hand. “Also have this really cool article I thought you'd be interested in.”
Undoubtedly yes, your advisor is brilliant and knows exactly the kind of compelling science stuff that would pull your interest–when he's not playing dumb pranks like putting a fake bug on your keyboard to scare the shit out of you. It was kind of funny in retrospect, but thankfully he never tried that one again. He makes a curious face as he continues.
“I didn’t know you guys knew each other.”
Your brain, currently in social protocol mode given your advisor’s appearance, has been jumpscared into unknown territory. Why wouldn't you know Red? You're in the same field, heck your labs are right next to each other, Dr. Mass is both your and Red’s advisor–oh wait a minute, that's right, Red is kind of a department secret isn't he? Bypassed a lot of rules to get himself into this PhD spot. Now that you think about it, you're probably the only student candidate who knows he's even in your cohort.
While you’re mentally puzzling through that, Red has thankfully picked up the social pieces.
“sure do teach. kinda ran into each other a few times, y’know?” Red gestures to the wall that your lab shares with his. While that's not really how you met, you did eventually run into each other that way… late at night… with you six feet in the air–
“Ha. That makes sense. You been talking shop? Trying something out?”
Talking shop? Well you were just trying out a few new ideas about SOUL mechanics on a quantum level–OH HOLY SHIT, YOUR ADVISOR ISN'T SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT IS HE? You quickly turn around and find, with utter relief, that Val is no longer hovering over your experimental stage, and even the laser is off. Notably, you're both still wearing safety glasses.
“jus’ talkin' about this connectome project brainac’s got going on here. lots of neat ideas.”
Your skeletal datemate is covering your collective asses, so you figure you should contribute.
“Red helped me figure out some issues I was having with biological interference causing decoherence in the system.”
“Oh yeah, you were saying last time you were running into trouble with that.”
You nod. “I've been implementing some of his suggestions and the fixes seem to be working within the algorithm.”
“Wow.” Your advisor grins with pride. “That's really cool guys.” And you feel the warm fuzzies of academic praise flood your system. “I'm glad to see you helping each other out.” He gives you a look, a small acknowledgement that despite your vehement independence, he sees you trying.
He sees you letting someone in.
“Tell me a little more about the mechanisms you're working with.”
You bring your advisor over to your computer–you quickly close the sensor application for the laser, thankfully no longer pulling any readings–and show him the changes you and Red have been making to your project. He runs through each one with you, making other observations and insights that you have to jot down onto your notepad to remember to try later. Even Red seems pleasantly impressed. Once you've spent a good twenty minutes going through everything, Dr. Mass asks Red about his thesis progress, which seems to be well on its way to completion–you still don't know how–and though your advisor is subtle, Red is open and freely admits that you know about his project objectives, which also seems to throw your advisor for a curveball. After all, you're not really supposed to know about it. It's a good forty minutes before your advisor finishes up with the two of you. On his way out, so he can ‘leave you guys to keep up with the work’, he stops at the door and looks back with a solid grin.
“Glad you each found yourself a co-collaborator.” His eyes meet your co-collaborator’s–oh god oh god oh god–with a knowing glint. “See you guys at the cohort meeting.”
Dr. Mass lets the door close behind him and Red looks like he just swallowed a fly. You have an inkling about it.
“This will be your first cohort meeting, right?”
“he said the board wasn't ready fer me yet. needed more time to work shit out.”
Knowing your advisor, you wonder if maybe they still aren't ready–
–but now he has the leverage to push them.
You interlock your fingers behind your back. “Do you want to go?”
Red hesitates, trying to figure out the answer. “i didn't before–jus’ figured it'd be a waste of time.” It does feel like that sometimes, to be fair. “but.. i dunno. now i.. kind of want to. see what everyone else is up to.” He smiles and nudges you playfully. “show off my co-collaborator’s research.”
You giggle self-consciously, but inside you reason he probably can't share his own thesis yet–not until he gets full approval from the department, probably some mess having to do with his existence in the program. Still, it must be really isolating–being treated differently because you're not human, because you're smart; not being able to be a part of the group you're supposed to belong to because someone out there is afraid of political backlash.
Afraid of who you are.
Your very existence a threat.
You brush a strand of hair behind your ear. “I'd really like that. Having you be there would be a huge improvement, honestly.” Considering the last time you practically ran out of the room–thanks a lot, Ryan–having your very safe and supportive datemate at a somewhat stressful social event could not be more appealing.
Red rolls his eye lights with a grin. “yer sweet as sugar.”
Tits.
“Hey did you call me sugartits before??”
“... maybe. ya hate it?”
You think about it. Do you hate it?
“No? I just wasn't expecting it.”
“i'm full of surprises sweetknees.”
You snort, thoroughly amused by your datemate's commitment to petnames. It does kind of make you miss hearing your own name, though. Maybe you'll be brave and ask for that.
Later.
For now…
“Where did Val go? Are they okay?”
“yep, just pulled ‘em back over to my lab.” He grins. “why? ya not done with ‘em yet?”
Heavens no.
“Well… I was thinking about it, and I’m actually really curious about what happens if we use concentrated magic instead of laser light, since that might be what’s driving the system in the first place. But we also have to actually confirm the state–if it doesn’t persist consistently, the time crystal theory may be a bust.”
“that’s what science is for, innit? gotta test the shit outta everything and then it’s still ‘just a theory’.”
“Even the Laws are being challenged.” You hold up the article for Red. “Take a look.”
Before getting back to some serious SOUL deep-diving, you and Red spend ten minutes twittering about physical fluids that defy classical motion and how quantum engines produce extra work than what heat alone should allow (fuck you Law of Entropy, apparently). And despite being so far from the comfort of your own bed
you’ve never felt so at home.