I understand why Asgore waited so long to hire a new royal scientist. The previous one... Dr. Gaster... his brilliance was irreplaceable.

However, his life… was cut short.

One day, his experiments went wrong, and…

One day, he fell into his own creation, and…

One day, he vanished without a trace.

...

They say he shattered across time and space.

Well, I needn't gossip. After all, it's rude to talk about someone who's listening.

Doctor Alphys carefully stepped across the icy ground of the town of Snowdin. The floor itself gave the illusion of pure snow; but underneath the slight dusting were layers upon layers of ice adding to the possibility of slipping. It was the middle of the night, although not many monsters would be able to tell. The Doctor had been hired just a week ago, and whoever had been the previous doctor, Alphys didn't particularly remember, had refused to keep the cameras functional. To be fair, it had been forever since a human came through the Underground, but that was no reason for all of monsterkind to let their guard down.

So, before Alphys could start any real experimenting, she had to wander endlessly around the entire underground and repair eighty percent of the cameras; most of which were hidden in extremely inconvenient locations. She was admittedly anxious to get to actual experimentation, and after having her patience thinned from the previous days of repairing said cameras, had decided to stay up late and get the task done with more speed.

The nearest camera was in the most convenient of locations: it was hidden between evergreens towards the passage to Waterfall. It was just to the left of a two-story house that had been half-decorated with holiday lights, most of which were not plugged in. The trees were behind the structure, so the Royal Scientist had to navigate around a set of twin mailboxes.

She pushed aside a limb of one of the trees and leaned into the foliage, looking for the device. As she withdrew her cellphone from her coat pocket and tried to switch on a repair tool, there was a loud clang of metal-on-metal from somewhere behind her. This was followed by an even louder popping sound, and after a silent moment, a hiss. Alphys let out a shrill squeak of surprise, her hand falling from the tree limb and causing the branch to recoil back into its normal position. She backed out of the foliage as quickly as possible, shaking off a layer of snow that had gathered on her shoulders.

The noise was coming from a door that seemed to be camouflaged with the back of the house. Now that she actually noticed it, the door was standing slightly ajar. The scientist, in response, dashed to the door far too quickly. She slid across the ice and ended up throwing herself down a steep staircase that had been concealed behind it, causing her spectacles to fly from her face and further down the staircase descending in front of her.

Once more there was another noise, this one more identifiable: a startled sound from wherever the back of the room was. Suddenly, the doctor found herself hovering midair a few inches above the ground. A skeleton eyed the newcomer from the end of the room warily. He was standing atop a purple tarp that lined the floor surrounded by machine parts and various tools. Some of the mentioned materials were unrecognizable by Alphys, and she was sure that there were even more similar to them scattered throughout the room.

Before the doctor had a chance to protest the use of magic, she had both feet and her tail on the ground again. "heh. sorry, guess your entrance just rattled me a bit." The doctor could only stare at the blue and white blur in confusion. Eventually she recovered. "S-sorry… I just.. uh.. h-heard something, and I thought someone might be in s-some type of d-danger…?"She spoke as if her sentence was a question, dragging her vowels a bit too much. The skeleton shrugged. He took a few steps forward, knelt down, and handed Alphys her glasses back. The lizard quickly slid them onto her face, blinking at him gratefully. "Th-thank you."

"i don't see any need for you to go that far. i just gave you your glasses back. though, i guess if you look at the situation through different eyes-" The skeleton left the sentence unfinished and grinned, although Alphys wasn't sure whether he'd been grinning beforehand or not. "anyway, i'm fine, just been messin' around is all."

Now able to clearly see her surroundings, she noticed the tall machine towering behind the skeleton. "O-Oh! I see!" She didn't need more than one glance to tell that it was in ruin; but despite this she didn't have the faintest inkling of what it was. Curiosity took its hold for a moment. With only a brief review of what was to be said, she blurted out, "Wh-What is that anyway..?"

"this? its nothin' special, just something i need to fix is all."

"O-Oh, w-wow. Y-You look like you really have your work cut out for you, then." As Alphys glanced back to the machine and took a moment to actually observe it, having noticed it looked slightly familiar. Although, from where she might have seen fragments of the design, she was unsure.

"uh-huh, it'll be worth it though, if i can get it to work anyway."

Alphys' coming response was based on two conditions: firstly; it was late, and the doctor wasn't in the best mind for considering everything her suggestion was to entail. Secondly, as previously mentioned, the doctor hadn't done in real meaningful work in a long time, so even if it was just a favor…

"W-Well, um… m-maybe I c-could help you with that."

The skeleton's head jolted back a centimeter, and Alphys wasn't sure if she had imagined the subtle movement or not.

"I-I mean… if you don't mind." She tapped one of her claws against the palm of her hand twice. "It l-looks interesting, and I haven't seen much like th-that machine b-before, plus it s-seems somewhat im-important. Y-You even s-said that you have a-a lot of work to do, so maybe w-we could-"

"okay."

She took a second.

"W-wait… r-really?"

"yeah, sure, why not."

Alphys gave the skeleton an awkward laugh. "Riiiight, I mean you s-said it yourself! Why n-not?"

"i'm sans. sans the skeleton."

"O-Oh! Right!" Apparently, the basic act of introducing herself had completely slipped from Alphys' mind. "Alphys. I-I'm the new royal scientist."

The skeleton nodded. "it'll be good to have another set of hands; i've been workin' at this forever and i keep getting caught up on something or other. honestly, it's gettin' real frustrating."

"O-Oh, I'm sure it's n-not that bad." Alphys bluffed. The machine was clearly a mess. "D-Do you have instructions or s-something?"

Sans chuckled in response to this. "i have blueprints, but you wouldn't be able to read them."

Illegible blueprints? It took the scientist a moment, but she recalled why the machine looked sligthly familiar. "A-actually, I think I've seen some images of prototypes for this thing before. In my lab, I have a few old blueprints from the scientist before me. Parts of this machine look familiar to what I could decipher from those documents." Of course, she hadn't been able to decipher much more than a few basic images.

"yeah, i guess that makes sense. i'll read out what i have for you, howbow dah?" The skeleton somehow already had the blueprints in his hand. He swung himself onto the counter and lazily slouched against the wall, leaving the lizard to approach to device. A plate of metal had been unscrewed so that the lizard was able to crawl into the machine. "O-Okay…" Alphys quite frankly had no idea what she was looking at. She reached for her phone and flipped it on so the area could be a little lighter and so that she could access the tools she had programmed into it.

"alright, i'm pretty sure that the location you're in is where the machine generates magical energy." There was a moment of silence. "i mean, i think there's different ways to generate magical energy, besides just the natural energy. ya know, 4.186 joules equals a calorie, and a little over triple that digit equals one unit of raw magical energy. i suppose, just by looking at it, this part probably heats up enough and then transfers that heat to this piece over here." Sans gestured to a certain cylinder. Alphys had to take a moment.

"W-Who uses m-methods like that anymore anyway? W-Wasn't that j-just one of those attempts of finding an alternative way to create m-magical energy way back when?"

"somethin' like that."

"A-According to your theory, that's the composition of magic electricity when it's packed into a small body, I th-think."

It was odd that the machine would have to call for that amount of magic. There was a small broken container-like mechanism made out of platinum that was surrounded by an array of small pistons. To the side of the container there were large tubes that seemed to have some strange system of metal and wire built inside them. There were tubes shooting out from the right and top of the strange container. Alphys was already entangled in a few wires, herself, much to the poor lizard's embarrassment. Scattered among the mesh of cords was corroded metal that made the whole image far less clear, and on top of that seemed to serve no purpose. "okay, so according to this, the container needs to be able to be compressed, and immediately afterwards reverted to the state it was in originally."

Alphys bit her lower lip and thought it over. "H-How are we supposed to do that?" The skeleton shrugged, although there was no way the doctor would be able to see it. "Wh-what are we t-trying to do here, anyway?"

"from what i can tell, we're generating magic or something."

"Why would we be generating magic b-by crushing something? Are we trying to convert the motion into magical energy or s-something?" That had to be wrong, if the machine called for that much magic to be in such a small place- … wait a moment.

"Wh-what if we're not generating magic here?"

"well the blueprint says something about magic…"

"W-What if… we're c-compressing magic in this b-box thing?" She gestured to the previously mentioned container. "Th-these tubes could u-um.. they could transfer magical energy into it, and the pistons c-could compress the energy down."

"Wouldn't the magical energy just flow out into the tubes beside it?"

"M-Maybe that's what this d-device is for?"

"what device?"

"There's some metal structuring inside the wires leading to it."

"oh… guess I missed that."

The skeleton didn't seem to have any type of flashlight on him, so Alphys concluded he might not have seen it in the dark.

"if it's not generating any energy, where does it come from, then?"

Alphys tapped a few buttons on her phone and activated her camera app. She slowly navigated it through one of the trails of cylinders. Once she reached the end of it, she tapped at the button. "O-One of the cylinders l-leads to a regular el-electricity generator, but it's sh-short circuited. It l-looked like it was pretty advanced for a generator."

She carefully guided the little camera down the rightward facing conduit. The phone eventually displayed the same pattern that had decorated the wall of the room she had seen before she got under the machine.. "I-It looks a bit like the other one is supposed to c-connect to something... maybe t-the magic source that you mentioned?"

"Yeah, i s'pose that makes sense."

Alphys went back and observed the mass of metal within the pipes. She was almost convinced that the structure had been meant to shut off the pipes after energy had been supplied to the container. "I th-think that's b-busted, as well." Sans didn't question the out-of-context comment. "Wh-What even happened to the machine?"

"it's kinda... hard to explain."

"I s-suppose we should work on the electrical generator." The was the most familiar looking device to the scientist. Everything else was, to some degree, foreign to her. She had barely recognized the design for the pistons earlier, and they were being used to crush metal as opposed to being used to jostle liquids. The lizard's head was beginning to ache. It was getting far too late for this, and she didn't want to think about the machine much longer, despite hardly having started. Alphys slowly crawled out from under the machine and ended up getting one of the spikes on her head caught up in a large entanglement of cords. After ten seconds of trying to get the wires off of her spike gently, she resorted to forcibly clawing off what she could.

"sorry 'bout that." Sans watched as she unraveled the coils from around her head. "thanks though, ac-cord-ing to what you said there's a few more questions that need to be unraveled."

Alphys choose to ignore the word play, although it took a lot of her willpower not to throw something at Sans. "R-Really? I th-think I m-made things make a b-bit more sense." She instantly felt as if she had given herself way too much credit.

"well, for one, we have no idea where the magical energy is coming from, just that we need a lot of it."

"R-Right…"

"not to mention that if this isn't used to create energy, it makes the rest of the machine more confusing."

"O-Oh…"

"hey, no pressure. i've had to restart a few times already, no need to sweat it. i think you helped out well enough."

"O-Oh! Thanks then." Alphys readjusted her glasses and assumed an awkward smile.

"why are you thankin' me? you're the one who threw me a bone."

"Heh… heh… right… um…"

"if you don't mind.. can I ask you something?"

"S-Sure!"

"can you come back to work on this sometime? it's kinda important, and you seem to know what you're doing."

"O-Oh… uh… sure! I d-d-don't see why not."

"cool. i guess i'll just call send you a message on undernet when i need ya."

"A-Alright…"

"Nice. hopefully, with you helping me, i'll get a net-gain."

Alphys eventually saw herself up the steep stairway and stepped out into the damp snow. After a few moments of scattered thoughts, Alphys begrudgingly decided that she might as well finish the job of fixing up the cameras again. After all, she knew she would regret not finishing it if she didn't do it tonight.