Label: VIRGO ENTERTAINMENT Band: VANDALISM IN PROGRESS Instrument: TROMBONE Fame Lvl: 0 Current MP: 0
Short Description: ► Sans is a trom-BONER lol. jk I'll do this properly soon. (though it would be in the spirit of Sans not to.)
Regains So Far: ► MODERATE SPACE-TIME MANIPULATION: He can teleport himself around the city, and also teleport other people and objects within range of sight.
[Sans snickers appreciatively, still scribbling. Apparently whatever he's writing makes sense to him.]
Right. First off, we've gotta narrow down some context. Are the things we see the future, the past, or some kind of alternate reality. Are they memories we're meant to have, or is them coming up unnatural?
Since some of this stuff sounds pretty out of this world, my inclination would be to believe it's some kind of past life echo phenomenon. But...then you have to ask why they're happening and why anybody even cares about it in the first place - can't really see how that applies to the music biz', y'know?
But when you focus on the part where we are...apparently not allowed to quit on threat of death - then the purpose behind erasing things and not wanting them to come back is all too clear.
The question is...
[And he looks at Greg meaningfully for this.]
Are you prepared to accept a world in which everything any one of us remembers is absolutely and linearly real?
[ Greg stares, expression entirely blank. His rate of processing is a good thirty seconds behind Sans' rapidfire reasoning. That's not even counting the complicated question topping it off at the end. ]
I, uh. That's kind of...
[ It would be one thing if he were asking about only Greg's memories. Those... they've been strange, surreal, sometimes a bit frightening, but never bad. If those were real...
But Greg doesn't know what other people are remembering, what sort of strange thoughts are getting opened up to them. He hasn't been asking, for a wide range of reasons. ]
I dunno if it's a question of accepting it, so much as figuring out what to do if that's the case.
I feel that accepting it might be the only thing we can do at the moment. It's hard to act on something if you don't have any evidence proving it exists in the first place.
[Admitting to a degree of helplessness doesn't seem to put him off as much as it could. Having anything worth doing or working on is liberating enough on its own, even if it's just one big thought experiment.]
If everything we see took place in the past...our past, as opposed to some other version of ourselves...then it means we were somewhere that we're not anymore.
[That...perhaps nothing about their earlier history is true? That part gets to him suddenly, less because it's disturbing and more because he just suddenly finds himself confused about the premise for no particular reason. A quiet, suppressed part of himself thinks: It's happening again...
He frowns (and odd face on him, to be sure) and looks down at his note pad, and taps his pen against his chin.]
[ By now, Greg's willing to accept anything, so long as it feels solid. Things are already awful, so really it's a matter of how to adapt to whatever scraps of reality may come.
He's largely willing to sit quietly and be a sounding board against Sans talking through things. He can't exactly contribute a whole lot to this sort of reasoning aside from nodding along.
It's when Sans pauses that Greg allows his own discomfort to speak up. ]
It can't be right, though. It doesn't add up, not just the world, but... [ What are the words he needs? Everything's too jumbled for him to even know how to say it. ] Just... us, as people, it doesn't... match up.
[Sans runs a hand over his head, very mildly frustrated with this stopping point. It makes him more than willing to prompt Greg for more information, hoping it will get him going.]
I... I told you, right? The uh. Memories, I guess that's what to call them, but...
[ He rubs a hand over his face. He's been way more into focusing on the cool parts of what he sees, the magic and the warm happy feelings. The person he is feels... underwhelming, in comparison. ]
I'm... I'm old in 'em. Not always, but more often than not. That's... that's how it feels, at least.
[The harder Sans thinks about this, the more weird concepts start leaking into his mind. Stuff about timelines, and souls, and...magic? It doesn't feel as weird as it should, though. It just feels sort of sensible, and useful. Enough that, for the moment, he isn't separating it from present reality.]
Timeline discrepancies wouldn't exactly be unprecedented at this point - but hell if that doesn't open a whole new can of worms. Say that you go on to have this kid in your subjective future...
[Sans draws a straight line on his paper, for Greg to see. He makes a crudely drawn, baby shaped icon at the end of it.]
But then somehow you're taken out of the picture...
[He moves back along the line to somewhere in the middle, and draws another dot - and the draws an arrow indicating it forking off of the path.]
Then what becomes of that timeline? What happens to the kid? He's still born if he's here, obviously, but...
[He draws an arrow from the baby icon too, leading to a question mark.]
[ Steven hasn't popped out of existence from too much pre-dad exposure, which is a pretty good indicator. It could have something to do with how everything seems to get muddled and achey when they talk for too long, though.
Speaking of, a dull headache is thrumming its way into the back of Greg's skull.
Greg looks from the crude timeline, up to Sans, nodding. You haven't lost him so far, which is an accomplishment in itself. ]
[Greg is keeping up! Good. This part isn't exactly going to be comforting, but...whether or not it's comforting isn't really a factor occurring to Sans at the moment.]
Unless...
[He considers things for another moment.]
They took the kid first. It wouldn't effect you in the past, would it?
[He crosses out the baby.]
And then they scroll back even further and take you.
[He crosses out the "Greg" dot.]
The causal timeline get broken, but only after the kid has presumably been put outside of it. Which means everything after your exit point becomes functionally a dead timeline.
[He scribbles the rest of the line out. It's sort of foreboding.]
It could be possible that the timeline where you had him no longer exists.
[ Oh good, now he's feeling nauseous on top of that headache. That's just what he needs. ]
Could be. [ His voice creaks a little. ]
But... we don't know if that's how, uh, time travel even works.
[ Greg's no quantum physicist, but he has read a lot of sci-fi novels. He taps a finger against the paper, drawing imaginary lines splaying out from the crossed line. ]
There could be infinitely branching timelines, each still intact after divergence?
[No, that's stupid, is Sans instinctive response. But he doesn't...really know why? Or actually, he does, because they've put plenty of research into how the timeline works after this whole mess, and if it just diverged every time it wouldn't be...a problem...
...y'know...existential angst aside...
Wait a second.]
And then what...these "memories" are of alternate timelines, I guess?
[Alternate timeline where he is a wizard?!]
I mean...
[our reports showed a massive anomaly in the timespace continuum. timelines jumping left and right, stopping and starting...
you can't understand how this feels.
knowing that one day, without any warning... it's all going to be reset.]
Well, fuck.
[He flops down onto his back on the couch, staring up at the ceiling with a look of mild horror. Whatever that means in Sans facial language.]
[ That's got to be it, right? He's getting some sort of memory feedback from the dad timeline, or whatever. And also ones with giant magic ladies. So, you know, all sorts of cool stuff.
That's the only thing that makes sense to Greg, and it sounds something resembling plausible to someone who has no idea what he's talking about. He looks to Sans, hopeful for confirmation, but... ]
Uh... bud?
[ It's a rapid deflation as he looks at his friend. Come on, man, you gotta talk to him, you're the smart one here and he's never going to get anything on his own. ]
[It sinks in like a heavy weight. The feeling is familiar but distant, like something from years ago, but still relevant. He doesn't know the details, but...]
This has happened before.
[It's overwhelming, to say the least. He doesn't know how to phrase it to Greg - none of this is objective fact, it's just his personal experience. But how could it be so similar? His voice becomes darker.]
[ There's a lot of things that he could be referring to, given the scope of their conversation, but one aspect of it is clear enough. Greg leans in, voice hushed. ]
Sans, are you--are you saying you're a time traveler?
[ Even in the context of their awful situation, and even seeing how clearly distraught Sans is over this recalled fact... Greg just can't quite keep the tone of awe out of his voice. He knows he should, that this is bigger than his dumb sci-fi fantasies but... he can't help himself. ]
[There is something emphatic about it, but not because Greg's question was stupid. Far from. It doesn't seem like there could be such a thing as a stupid question with so many possibilities at play.
But no. Even if he doesn't know the details, he knows, instinctually, that him not being able to time travel was the whole problem. Or part of it, anyway.]
But someone else was.
[His gaze stays on the ceiling, lost in thought.]
I remembered something earlier - me talking to someone about timelines. About how I knew that they'd been shifting because I'd been studying the phenomenon - some kind of anomaly, I called it. And about how...they were just going to get reset back to a certain point. Over and over. And only me and the...the kid I was talking to about it knew. Because it was their fault.
[ Greg still can't believe he's having this conversation in complete seriousness. It's something they used to joke about, but now it feels like the most deadly important, deeply real subject they've ever gone over. And they were talking about the morality of murder a couple minutes ago.
Perhaps it's the realization of how very real his all is--even if it's all theorizing, Greg's seen too much to think of it as anything but real--that's making it harder to keep up with something he spoke of so lightly before. There's a pressure to try and get it right, and Greg doesn't know if he can.
But he does pick up on one connecting thread of Sans', loud and clear. ]
[He closes his eyes. It's hard to say if the kid is just that important to his life over all, or if they were just pivotal to certain key events. There just isn't enough context for it all. How much information is he even missing? Either way, they are apparently quite memorable, in more than once sense.]
Finally explains why I have such variable opinions of them. I feel like how much of a fucker they felt like being was the major cause of the discrepancies between each timeline.
But you're still getting memories from those different timelines.
[ Does this feed into the theory that they're getting some sort of memory feedback between dimensions? Or is it something even more special to Sans? In either case, it only brings up more questions than it solves. Greg scratches as his hair, blowing out a long exhale. ]
Well. If I can say... I dunno about any of the rest of it. It all sounds really messed up. But being some sort of... time... scientist... still sounds pretty badass.
[Sans slowly sits up, a bewildered grin on his face. Definitely grinning, though - what a silly comment. Charmingly, so. Considering it all, it had felt almost normal, and hearing Greg comment on it somehow puts that into perspective.
He laughs, in a good-natured way. He feels like he needed that, at the moment.]
Don't it ever, though? [He leans back, his arms crossed behind his head, smiling.] Some kind of wizard, too, from the looks of things.
Nah, I'm envisioning like... posing in front of a wormhole, wearing a tattered lab coat and a bandolier full of volatile beakers and test tubes, and like... some cool fire effect on your hands, probably...
[ Look out, he's absolutely getting way into this. Totally creating some tumblr fanart in his head. ]
Well he's peer-reviewed, baby So don't cross the line, The only way to shake him is to Run through time!
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Greg watches Sans jotting down notes, again feeling more out of his depth than ever, and sinks down into the couch. ]
They all make it easy to strike a chord.
[ There, he can provide you with that much, pal. ]
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Right. First off, we've gotta narrow down some context. Are the things we see the future, the past, or some kind of alternate reality. Are they memories we're meant to have, or is them coming up unnatural?
Since some of this stuff sounds pretty out of this world, my inclination would be to believe it's some kind of past life echo phenomenon. But...then you have to ask why they're happening and why anybody even cares about it in the first place - can't really see how that applies to the music biz', y'know?
But when you focus on the part where we are...apparently not allowed to quit on threat of death - then the purpose behind erasing things and not wanting them to come back is all too clear.
The question is...
[And he looks at Greg meaningfully for this.]
Are you prepared to accept a world in which everything any one of us remembers is absolutely and linearly real?
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I, uh. That's kind of...
[ It would be one thing if he were asking about only Greg's memories. Those... they've been strange, surreal, sometimes a bit frightening, but never bad. If those were real...
But Greg doesn't know what other people are remembering, what sort of strange thoughts are getting opened up to them. He hasn't been asking, for a wide range of reasons. ]
I dunno if it's a question of accepting it, so much as figuring out what to do if that's the case.
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[Admitting to a degree of helplessness doesn't seem to put him off as much as it could. Having anything worth doing or working on is liberating enough on its own, even if it's just one big thought experiment.]
If everything we see took place in the past...our past, as opposed to some other version of ourselves...then it means we were somewhere that we're not anymore.
[That...perhaps nothing about their earlier history is true? That part gets to him suddenly, less because it's disturbing and more because he just suddenly finds himself confused about the premise for no particular reason. A quiet, suppressed part of himself thinks: It's happening again...
He frowns (and odd face on him, to be sure) and looks down at his note pad, and taps his pen against his chin.]
That doesn't make sense.
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He's largely willing to sit quietly and be a sounding board against Sans talking through things. He can't exactly contribute a whole lot to this sort of reasoning aside from nodding along.
It's when Sans pauses that Greg allows his own discomfort to speak up. ]
It can't be right, though. It doesn't add up, not just the world, but... [ What are the words he needs? Everything's too jumbled for him to even know how to say it. ] Just... us, as people, it doesn't... match up.
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Us, as people, in what way?
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[ He rubs a hand over his face. He's been way more into focusing on the cool parts of what he sees, the magic and the warm happy feelings. The person he is feels... underwhelming, in comparison. ]
I'm... I'm old in 'em. Not always, but more often than not. That's... that's how it feels, at least.
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[Sans looks a little confused. It seems sort of logical based on other things that Greg has said.]
...Didn't you say you had a kid that was old enough to be here?
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So... it's more likely that there's... I dunno, timeline hopping going around, or something, right?
[ You can't just make a person young. That doesn't happen. Clearly. It couldn't be. Obviously. ]
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Timeline discrepancies wouldn't exactly be unprecedented at this point - but hell if that doesn't open a whole new can of worms. Say that you go on to have this kid in your subjective future...
[Sans draws a straight line on his paper, for Greg to see. He makes a crudely drawn, baby shaped icon at the end of it.]
But then somehow you're taken out of the picture...
[He moves back along the line to somewhere in the middle, and draws another dot - and the draws an arrow indicating it forking off of the path.]
Then what becomes of that timeline? What happens to the kid? He's still born if he's here, obviously, but...
[He draws an arrow from the baby icon too, leading to a question mark.]
Talk about having your cake and eating it too.
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Speaking of, a dull headache is thrumming its way into the back of Greg's skull.
Greg looks from the crude timeline, up to Sans, nodding. You haven't lost him so far, which is an accomplishment in itself. ]
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Unless...
[He considers things for another moment.]
They took the kid first. It wouldn't effect you in the past, would it?
[He crosses out the baby.]
And then they scroll back even further and take you.
[He crosses out the "Greg" dot.]
The causal timeline get broken, but only after the kid has presumably been put outside of it. Which means everything after your exit point becomes functionally a dead timeline.
[He scribbles the rest of the line out. It's sort of foreboding.]
It could be possible that the timeline where you had him no longer exists.
[FASCINATING.]
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Could be. [ His voice creaks a little. ]
But... we don't know if that's how, uh, time travel even works.
[ Greg's no quantum physicist, but he has read a lot of sci-fi novels. He taps a finger against the paper, drawing imaginary lines splaying out from the crossed line. ]
There could be infinitely branching timelines, each still intact after divergence?
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...y'know...existential angst aside...
Wait a second.]
And then what...these "memories" are of alternate timelines, I guess?
[Alternate timeline where he is a wizard?!]
I mean...
[our reports showed a massive anomaly in the timespace continuum. timelines jumping left and right, stopping and starting...
you can't understand how this feels.
knowing that one day, without any warning... it's all going to be reset.]
Well, fuck.
[He flops down onto his back on the couch, staring up at the ceiling with a look of mild horror. Whatever that means in Sans facial language.]
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That's the only thing that makes sense to Greg, and it sounds something resembling plausible to someone who has no idea what he's talking about. He looks to Sans, hopeful for confirmation, but... ]
Uh... bud?
[ It's a rapid deflation as he looks at his friend. Come on, man, you gotta talk to him, you're the smart one here and he's never going to get anything on his own. ]
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This has happened before.
[It's overwhelming, to say the least. He doesn't know how to phrase it to Greg - none of this is objective fact, it's just his personal experience. But how could it be so similar? His voice becomes darker.]
I remember.
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[ There's a lot of things that he could be referring to, given the scope of their conversation, but one aspect of it is clear enough. Greg leans in, voice hushed. ]
Sans, are you--are you saying you're a time traveler?
[ Even in the context of their awful situation, and even seeing how clearly distraught Sans is over this recalled fact... Greg just can't quite keep the tone of awe out of his voice. He knows he should, that this is bigger than his dumb sci-fi fantasies but... he can't help himself. ]
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[There is something emphatic about it, but not because Greg's question was stupid. Far from. It doesn't seem like there could be such a thing as a stupid question with so many possibilities at play.
But no. Even if he doesn't know the details, he knows, instinctually, that him not being able to time travel was the whole problem. Or part of it, anyway.]
But someone else was.
[His gaze stays on the ceiling, lost in thought.]
I remembered something earlier - me talking to someone about timelines. About how I knew that they'd been shifting because I'd been studying the phenomenon - some kind of anomaly, I called it. And about how...they were just going to get reset back to a certain point. Over and over. And only me and the...the kid I was talking to about it knew. Because it was their fault.
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Perhaps it's the realization of how very real his all is--even if it's all theorizing, Greg's seen too much to think of it as anything but real--that's making it harder to keep up with something he spoke of so lightly before. There's a pressure to try and get it right, and Greg doesn't know if he can.
But he does pick up on one connecting thread of Sans', loud and clear. ]
This is the same kid, huh?
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[He closes his eyes. It's hard to say if the kid is just that important to his life over all, or if they were just pivotal to certain key events. There just isn't enough context for it all. How much information is he even missing? Either way, they are apparently quite memorable, in more than once sense.]
Finally explains why I have such variable opinions of them. I feel like how much of a fucker they felt like being was the major cause of the discrepancies between each timeline.
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[ Does this feed into the theory that they're getting some sort of memory feedback between dimensions? Or is it something even more special to Sans? In either case, it only brings up more questions than it solves. Greg scratches as his hair, blowing out a long exhale. ]
Well. If I can say... I dunno about any of the rest of it. It all sounds really messed up. But being some sort of... time... scientist... still sounds pretty badass.
[ So you've got that going for you. ]
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He laughs, in a good-natured way. He feels like he needed that, at the moment.]
Don't it ever, though? [He leans back, his arms crossed behind his head, smiling.] Some kind of wizard, too, from the looks of things.
[A very talented doomed time loop man indeed.]
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[ Greg crosses his arms squints at him, making a big show of how dubious he is. ]
Sans, buddy. I might have to make another EP about you.
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He is extremely amused.]
Hey, as long as you don't draw any of those fantasy cheesecake art pieces of me, you have my permission.
[You are invited to imagine a cheesecake style poster of Sans - except no, fandom has already done that I'm sure.]
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[ Look out, he's absolutely getting way into this.
Totally creating some tumblr fanart in his head.]Well he's peer-reviewed, baby
So don't cross the line,
The only way to shake him is to
Run through time!
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