The Time Before (Undertale)

37 ~ Dr. Sans' Prank Wars

The problem with building a machine to fold space was that it had never been done before, and no one really knew what they were doing.

Nonetheless, everyone still worked on it to the best of their ability.

And Sans decided that, just because Gaster had said he couldn't, he was going to have fun in the True Lab.

It was a Thursday. They had been at the drawing board for weeks, and no one had come up with any ideas.

Sans was sitting in a desk chair, lazily spinning in circles. He had no ideas, and was lacking in any upcoming ideas. As he turned past the desk once more, he spied a pencil sitting on the desk.

He stopped spinning and picked up the pencil. For a minute or two, he just looked at it.

Gaster wasn't in the room at the moment.

Then he shoved it towards his mouth.

Evidently, it was only food-like items that were capable of being shoved into his mouth, as the pencil refused to pass easily through his teeth. Eventually, though, he got it jammed halfway into his mouth, and held it there. Then he reached for a plastic cup that was sitting on the desk. It had been filled with soda earlier, but he had long since drank all of it. That was a good thing, as he now tipped it upside down, and, leaning back in his seat, set the cup over the pencil. Then he grabbed a couple of papers off the desk and balanced them on top of the upside down cup.

"S-Sans, w-what are you doing?" Alphys asked, the first of the people in the room to notice his antics.

"nothin'." Sans was a little surprised to find that his speech was not at all impaired by the pencil sticking out of his mouth. Nonetheless, he continued on. There was a ruler on the desk, which he set on top of the papers balanced on the cup over the pencil in his mouth. After a minute of feeling around the desk (he couldn't just look, as that would mean lowering his head, which would tip the things off,) he found a rubber band and some paper clips, which were added to the balance. Further pawing around revealed nothing else of easy use for balancing.

"... hey, al. see that marker over there?" He gestured carefully. "yeah, can you bring it over here."

It wasn't long before he had all the team helping him, running around the room, bringing him things to add to his growing tower. Soon there were two more plastic cups, another ruler, a lot more paper, some of which was crumpled into balls, more paper clips and rubber bands, two whiteboard markers, two pieces of chalk, a screwdriver, a paper plate, and a long piece of twine all added to the construction balanced on the pencil in his mouth. It was a sort of game, each of the Spacefold team seeing if they could add their thing to the structure without toppling it.

And then Gaster came in.

"What..." He said slowly. "What is going on here?"

For a moment, everyone was silent.

Finally, Sans spoke up. "we're learnin' about clever architecture, by means of commonly found objects in the lab, and balancing them to defy gravity."

Gaster looked at Sans, then at the strange assortment of objects all balanced on the pencil he held between his teeth. For a minute or two, he just frowned.

Then, with a sigh, he shrugged. "Well. Don't let me get in the way of a learning experience. Annoying Dog knows most of you really need it."

Everyone watched in astonished silence as Gaster walked to a table and started working on something or other there. Had he really just given the the go-ahead to keep fooling around like this?