Monster Age

by GR Griffin

  The time was right to snap out of her bout of self-pity and turn her attention back to the objective at hand. “Where did Papyrus go?” She was behind him by one second and now he was gone. If she had to guess, the issue regarding the accuracy of the teleporter might have rang true.

  Alphys reached into her lab coat pocket. “I’ll try giving Papyrus a call, he always has his phone on him and always picks up no matter what,” she said to herself as she plucked it out. “Maybe he…” She stopped, having taken one look at her phone and finding it pitch black, the colour of charcoal. “Oh no…” She punched a few buttons on the dial, the screen remained black. She brought the receiver to her ear, there was only silence. She pried the phone open and the components poured out like sand in an hourglass. It became painfully apparent by that point that this mobile device had sang its last tune. “I guess I focused so hard on the magical matter side that I forgot about how it would affect electronics.”

  She dropped the phone’s charred remains – which crumbled upon hitting the ground. “Okay, this might be a problem. I have no idea where Papyrus is, not to mention myself. I have no way of contacting the others. I have no way of knowing if Papyrus is alright.” She breathed a deep breath. A sudden chain of thought popped into her analytical brain. “What if Papyrus didn’t make it? What if the rest followed me through? What if they didn’t make it? How will I get back down to Earth?” The more questions she posed herself, the worse it got. “What if I’m on another planet? Or in another time period? Or in another reality?”

  She threw her claws out in front of herself. “Okay, Alphys, calm down. D-don’t panic,” she spoke steadily. “Whatever you do, don’t panic. You’ve been in worse spots…”

  Since when?

  Alphys paused. She briefly looked around to see if anyone else was present, which there were none.

  She clutched her head and screamed. “OH MY GOD! I’M LOST! I’M LOST! WHAT AM I GONNA DO? EVERYTHING’S GONE TO HECK! I’M GONNA DIE! I’M GONNA DIE IN A PLACE WHERE NO-ONE KNOWS ME!”

  * * *

  Papyrus blinked, finding himself in a vast, dark room. The walls extended high upwards, steeped in shadows, cyan and flat. A curved set of silver doors built into the centre, reflecting the miniscule amount of light present. Just one second ago, he was running for his life from the abomination that was labelled Mew Mew. In his blind panic, he activated the teleporter and jumped straight in. Whatever life had in store between himself and that robot made plunging back down to Earth or being lost forever in the depths of space more preferable by comparison.

  Papyrus could only hope that whatever unknown predicament he had just gotten himself into could in no way be any worse. Until he heard her.

  “Oh, how wonderful,” a robotic, female voice – different from Mew Mew’s – said with eagerness behind the skeleton. “My first specimen to process.”

  Shocked, Papyrus span around and found himself staring directly into the flattest face he had ever seen. A machine hung down from the ceiling, sporting mechanical parts coated black, layered with white plates. This particular robot bore the slightest resemblance to a human being, including a head and a body, but no visible limbs. It, or rather she – regarding the sound of their voice – gazed blankly with a single, glowing green eye. Coils of black wiring hung lose around her frame, their purpose both understandable and yet unsettling.

  The machine spoke on. “I do not know where you appeared from, however, at this point in time, that question is irrelevant. Introductions are in order. Hello and welcome to the Aperture Science Computer Aided Enrichment Centre. You should not take long to study, as evidenced by your complete lack of outer epidermis and nervous system.”

  “Nyoo hoo hoo, what horrid luck…” Papyrus lamented, frowning, feeling like the gods themselves were out to get him. “It would appear that I, quite unfortunately, escaped one robot only to face another.”

  The robot swayed her curved head to the side. For her joints being comprised purely of gears, her movements were close to soundless. “And it speaks. How intriguing, despite the fact that you possess no tongue or larynx, and therefore, no viable means in which you can speak. My vocabulary simply cannot locate the correct words to portray my feelings right now. I do not suppose that this talking lack of outer epidermis, nervous system, tongue and larynx has a name?”

  “You don’t know who I am? Everyone knows who I am – and by ‘everyone’ I mean ‘only a select few exceedingly great companions’.” Papyrus placed a gloved hand upon his proud battle body. “I am none other than the great Papyrus.”

  “Papyrus,” the machine said, analysing it. “Papyrus: Paper. Made from the pith of the papyrus plant. Papyrus: Typeface. Designed by – creator name here – in the year – creation year of discovery here.” Her voice changed drastically upon saying ‘creator name here’ and ‘creation year of discovery here’. “The term ‘great’ does not appear in either record; therefore, you are mediocre Papyrus, at best. For a simpler approach, I shall simply refer to you as subject one… out of one. One being the number of subjects I have yet to process.”

  “Subject in what exactly? Am I in robot school? Are you going to teach me something?” Papyrus felt a brush of apprehension, and cautiously asked, “You don’t date, do you?”

  The upside-down robot paused, every servo and gear in her body locking in place. “…I am going to pretend I did not hear that. Now, say the—”

  “Did I just gain affection points just now?” Papyrus pressed the issue. “Are you wanting to ‘tie the knot’?” He placed his gloved hands on in front of himself, visualising the knots. “I don’t see what’s so special about tying knots. I tie knots all the time, but I’m better at knotting ties. It’s tricky, but Lady Asgore once taught me. You start by crossing the road, then going through the tunnel, then around the – no, wait, that’s not right. It’s under the tunnel, then through the bridge—”

  The robot threw her face forward, looking the skeleton square in the eyes. “Stop talking, you should not be talking while I am talking. In fact, you should not be talking, period.” Something locked away within her files began to shake. “Say the—”

  “You know, robots do quite like learning and teaching things, but haven’t you ever considered a different line of work?”

  “What could be more satisfying than conducting experiments and valuable research for the betterment of mankind?”

  Papyrus’s thoughts drifted to the only other robot in his life – well, the one besides the terror in the doctor’s basement – whose season premier he caught this morning while eating his breakfast spaghetti. “How about dancing?” His eye sockets looked at the robot from her head upwards, and noticed the apparent lack of legs. “Okay, that might be a little out the picture. How about singing instead?”

  “Right, because, my existence within this walls gives me so much to sing about.”

  “How about cooking? You don’t have any arms, but that’s never stopped me in the past… mainly because I actually have arms. I would gladly give you some lessons on how to make great spaghetti.”

  Something else clicked from within the robot’s electronic cerebrum. The logic portrayed by the talking lack of outer epidermis, nervous system, tongue and larynx was too much to comprehend. Her programming might need to be defragged. “My control over this facility allows me to construct meals for employees. However, despite my wide range of resources in the culinary arts, they always seem to order cake and the occasional doughnut.”

  “Well, never fret,” Papyrus said with a smile. “I’m sure, if you put your mind to it, you can succeed at anything you want. Take me, for example; I put all my time and puzzle-making talent into becoming a member of the Royal Guard and…” Glance to the side. “They disbanded before I could join. On a completely unrelated note, have you tried—?”

  “Enough,” snapped the robot as something else that was important snapped inside her. “The testing will commence now. Say the first word you think of. A—”
<
br />   “The first word you think of,” Papyrus responded.

  “Un-un-unbelievable,” the robot said over a distorting, repeating voice. “The testing results are in. Unfortunately, they are invalid since the numbers on my IQ calculator do not go down to single digits. Congratulations.”

  “Then in that case, I, the great Papyrus, have truly outdone myself. What does IQ stand for anyway?”

  All of a sudden, the silver doors at the end of the room parted. A shaft of light sliced down the middle, parting the dimness the same way Moses parted the Red Sea. Papyrus and the machine were drawn to it. A short, stout figure cast a long shadow from inside the illuminated compartment. “Sorry I took so long, bro,” he said, echoing off every corner.

  Papyrus recognised that voice from anywhere, unfortunately. “Sans?” He squinted his eyes, making out his brother from deep within the sharp contrast between light and dark. “How did you get here?”

  Sans stepped into the vast room, his slippers scuffling against the cement floor. One hand in his jacket and the other holding a half-eaten slice of pizza. “Took the scenic route.” He took another bite. “Figured you’d get lost on the way, so I decided to swing ‘round,” he mumbled between chews. “Could’a done with some ketchup…”

  The robot’s single eye switched back and forth between the skeletons. “What is this? There was once one talking lack of outer epidermis, nervous system, tongue and larynx, now there is a second talking lack of outer epidermis, nervous system, tongue and larynx – and this one appears to be eating. None of this makes any sense.” The rest of her voice came out a broken mess of static and looping.

  “A new friends of yours, I take it?” asked Sans, eyeing her. “She looks mad, you could say she’s going nuts and bolts!”

  Ba-dum pish!

  A crunching noise came from within the robot. “That joke was so painful,” she said in an emotionless tone, “that it cracked my secondary sensor array.”

  “Guess this means that I’m pushing your buttons?”

  Ba-dum pish!

  “Stop,” the robot begged, “no more! I cannot take any more bad jokes!” Sparks were flying off her twitching body.

  “She’s not too bad,” Papyrus insisted under her jabbering. “She is simply unable to broaden her horizons.”

  Sans looked around at the four walls and darkened ceiling. “Broaden? Looks like what she really needs is an extension.”

  Ba-dum pish!

  The upside-down machine began to laugh, the pitch all over the place. “I hate you…”

  “We’d love to stay and hang around.” Sans mouthed the remainder of the pizza. “But Pap and I better skedaddle. We got places to be and I got puns to punt. C’mon, pal, let’s go.”

  Before following Sans, Papyrus gave the robot a wave. “Fare ye well, robot of which whose name I never got,” he said. “Don’t forget to write.”

  The seconds it took for the two skeletons to leave felt like hours for the malfunctioning android. She wanted nothing more than for them to be out of her artificial life. Holding on to whatever sane sense she had left, she watched as they entered the elevator and the silver doors slammed behind them.

  “Are they gone?” The robot asked. The sparks subsiding. “They are gone. I think my programming may have been corrupted.” She ran a quick diagnosis on her systems. “I would appear that my empathy files are… gone completely.”

  Something pinged, reminding her that the start of a brand new day was upon her. The doors of the Aperture Science complex were opening and the first of the paid, married employees were entering for a hard day of science.

  She, the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System, addressed them. Her voice spread to every room in the entire compound. “Good morning, employees. Today is going to be a very special day,” she announced as she warmed up the neurotoxin. The testing must go on.

  * * *

  “AHHHHHHH! HOW COULD I MESS EVERYTHING UP SO BAD? UNDYNE! I’M SO SORRY, UNDYNE! I’M SO SORRY, PAPYRUS! I’M SO SORRY, FLECK! ASGORE! TORIEL! SANS! WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE AND IT’S ALL MY FAULT!”

  Alphys stopped, at last. After that final scream, she inhaled deeply through her nose and exhaled slowly past her burning oesophagus, allowing the motion to still her mind, and return normality to her heartrate and breathing. Although, she would not mind a lozenge right about now.

  “Okay, Alphys,” she murmured. Her voice came out dulled through her ringing eardrums, beaten senselessly by the concentration of her own voice. “I think you got all your panic out. You got it all out. Now you can – AHHHHHH! I’M GONNA DIE! – okay, okay, now it’s all out.” She pulled her head upwards to face the blue and let out another sigh. “Now you can focus on your next move. What should I do?”

  Nearby, around the bend of one of the several hundred rock faces, she noticed the familiar presence of slanted roofs and red bricks. The colour made it stand out. Buildings. That could mean a town was close by, and a town meant people. Given her circumstances, that place was a better start than any.

  It did not take Alphys that long to make her way down. The ground had been engraved with paths, marked by the trudging soles of thousands, possibly over the course of all the time these islands have been here. Following one of these trails, it led her across a path that snaked down the cliff side. She hugged the wall all the way down, turning a five minute stroll into a twenty minute slog.

  On the canyon floor, the mountains grew insecure. The whole area felt like a deck of cards, one tiny tremor would cause the entire island to topple and swallow her whole in an avalanche of rock and dirt. The sky between the cracks was beginning to turn, with flecks of orange mingling with the blue. She rounded the next corner and she was there at her destination.

  The village looked out-of-sorts, its red houses out of place in a world of grey and brown. Alphys stood at its threshold, nobody in sight, nobody to say hello. To her left, a shabby sign, nailed lopsided on a plank, greeted her. Black, sloppy writing was smeared on the sign face, off-centre with the letters getting narrower the closer they reached the edge. Overall, it appeared that the sign took a painstaking two minutes to construct.

  A.Town

  (Thats our name, we’re stickin’ with it)

  Alphys shook her head. “They put the apostrophe in the wrong place…” Her eyes traced back to the village, to the dirt road flanked on both sides by rows of red buildings. Alphys could not shake the funny feeling that a Wild West shootout was about to take place here, telegraphed by a rolling tumbleweed like in every single black and white western ever made.

  Alphys had left her white hat at home.

  Reluctantly, she braved her first steps through. More houses presented themselves the further she walked; all of them custom made. Single storey houses opposite three-storey houses. Single and detached adjacent two-storey houses. There was no rhyme or reason behind it, every house was different, yet build from the same red brick, same red roof tiles, and the same four panel windows. Out of all the buildings, the only one that was not a house appeared to be a restaurant, and Alphys could not tell whether it really was a restaurant or a fast-food joint. Dare she knock on one of the doors and ask the occupants for assistance? Alphys was a short, puny monster in a strange land, one that could chew her up and spit her back out.

  The ex-royal scientist cursed herself. She was doing it again, always being so pessimistic about everything. With the fresh air in her lungs and the ceiling trapping her gone, she had hoped that her whole outlook on life would change, but old habits die hard, she supposed.

  Picking a house at random, she turned to her immediate left to a house with two floors. On the surface, it was no different, but Alphys’s intuition had a good feeling about that one. This was the same intuition that had caused all her mistakes and missed opportunities in the past. She stepped gingerly over to the house, through the garden on dirt and under the red awning. The doormat at the foot was swamped with dust.

  Shaking, Alphys tightened her hand into a fist
and hovered it before the door’s surface. A hot sweat rose on her skin as this brought back memories of trying to phone Fleck for the first time. She was hovering, arguing, pondering for so long. Struggling to figure out what to say. Before she knew it, her shaking fist was knocking as fast as a woodpecker against the door. She pulled away too late, the sound broke the silence of the town like a bell being rung at high noon.

  Alphys had left her six-shooter at home.

  From within the confines of brick and mortar, something creaked, then something crashed up to the door, each rattle made the scientist jump. The door creaked open, and there, through the gap, was something big, shrouded in darkness. A single eye looked around, finding nothing, until it looked down and noticed the petite creature in the white coat.

  The thing grunted impatiently, sounding like an ogre from a children’s cartoon mixed with an ogre from an adult movie. “This had better be good.”

  Alphys felt her legs begin to shake, first her hands, now them. “Um, h-hi. I’m sorry to—”

  Whatever he was, he swung the door open with such a force that he tore the entre frame from its basis. “Don’t you dare be sorry,” he bellowed, barging out into the daylight. Alphys fell backwards, her monster soul almost leaping from her body. Fear struck her paralysed when she looked up into the glaring black eyes of the massive potato monster. His arms and legs consisted of pale stalks, thick and twisted, the fingers and toes as defined as hardwood nails. Growths sprouted from different areas of his body like zits. A pair of faded, torn jeans and a dirty vest hung from his frame. “You pull me away from my favourite show and all you have to say is sorry?”

  Dr Alphys crawled back on her hands and feet, the burly monster towering over her, casting a mean shadow, offering her no purchase. “N-n-n-no! I’m sor – I mean, I didn’t know you were…” All around town, the doors of every single house started flying open and more vegetable monsters were growing out. A pair of carrots, one natural and the other cut into a stick. A beetroot wearing a kimono. A fat suede. A family of green beans. One by one, they exited their homes and advanced on the debacle. “I didn’t m-m-mean to—” An angry finger point from the potato monster shut her right up.