Chapter 10: It’s an Acronym

The memory pauses and skips yet again, but I’m happy it did this time. I want to remember, but not exactly all the pain he put me through to be one of his experiments, but it seems the skip doesn’t skip any of the gruesome details because I'm on the table again, tied down so I can’t move. Gaster is over near a table and is setting something up, I’m not sure what it was until he comes over with a large syringe filled with something black.

“This here is determination as we call it. I’ll inject you with doses and see what happens. Hopefully, you’ll do better then Alphys's subject. Though she did do it on a live flower specimen, an actual monster has yet to be injected with this substance. I have high hopes you will surpass my expectations. So just try to relax, Eve.” He says in an odd eerily calm tone, it makes me highly uncomfortable, but I grin and bear the pain as he injects the needle into a vein in my arm. He pushes the black liquid into my vein and it hurts upon entering my blood. The pain is intense and I squirm on the table, yelling out and begging him to stop, but he doesn’t. Time seems to slow forever and the pain hits my whole entire body, not just my arm. Finally, he pulls the needle out, and the vein he injected the determination into is black and swollen. I'm in tears and moaning in pain as my body freezes on the table, I can't move.

“Hm, it’s good so far. You’re still alive, so that’s a wonderful sign. Guess I was right about the dose amount. Try not to move too much, Eve. It will only hurt worse.” I can’t move anyway, even if I wanted to. I realize as I lay there in pain, he called me Eve, more than once actually. Why? Who was Eve? Is it his name for me?

“W-who is Eve?” My eyes shift over to the figure at the table as I struggle to speak, I grit my teeth to try to numb the pain or at least distract myself, but it was no use the pain has flooded my body and I still can’t move.

“Oh. I didn’t tell you? Hm. Must have slipped my mind. Well E.V.E is an acronym. You see it stands for Evaluate, Validate, Excogitate. Rather clever is I do say so myself. In the end, I hope to have you up and running, able to sense a human's past, present and future actions and able to know the level of hope is left in our world. Depending on what course of action needs to be taken will depend on both of those elements. The determination helps raise your senses, making them keen enough to activate both of those abilities. I also programmed a few other tidbits in your coding. I already have one subject that can do something of the sort. He was programmed to know the past, present, and futures in general, I also gave him a special ability that I am giving you as well. Unfortunately, he was a failed experiment and did not live up to expectations, but I have modeled your coding to correspond with his, only your coding has much since surpassed his since I learned from my mistakes. He also had a brother that was an utter failure, his coding was not successful and from what I could only guess was corrupted giving him less mentality to handle such abilities. Both of them were scrapped since they both proved to be failed experiments, not a total loss though. I have been able to perfect your coding design and you will have power beyond them and if you die, the determination will bring you back a feature they did not have.” His voice is so cold and uncaring. The way he says all this is as if I was a meaningless project with no feelings or anything and I began to believe that. When he told me I was a thing that was meant to probably destroy humans, I wonder why Chara didn’t trigger that function in me, maybe I will have more answers later. Chara's future should have registered right? I don't know why it didn't, but now that I think about it, Chara's past did. Huh... I suddenly realize when Gaster said “he” I think Gaster meant Sans. Sans had told me once that he has “cheats” as he calls them and he is able to understand things that I didn’t get until now. I don’t understand what he means by power, but that power had to be Sans's “cheats”. It makes sense as to why Sans and Papyrus understood me more than I did and why they know what went on behind closed doors. Though, Gaster said my abilities were modeled after Sans's abilities...Strange, I wonder if Sans ever picked up on that. Wait...Gaster said that Sans and Papyrus were scrapped? Does scrapped just mean let go and if that's so then...does that mean I was scrapped?

"How is killing humans suppose to bring about hope?" I glare at him, not quite understanding his logic here. The pain seems to lessen slightly, giving me the ability to move only slightly and speak with more easy.

"So many questions, so little time. Look, humans killed your friend Asriel. Humans are not the kindest of creatures and the only way to get out of the Underground is with a strong enough soul. Humans have strong souls, monster souls combined with human souls give us a better chance to cross the barrier. It is kill or be killed, you kill them first less damage to our world and with that, you bring more hope. You would be able to absorb each human soul and soon enough you could be able to break the barrier if strong enough. That is my theory. You are the hope I want to make and prove my theory that the barrier can be broken by a monster strong enough. Now, hush up and stop with your trivial questions." He glares over to me as I speak and after finishing his explanation he grows far more annoyed with my constant questions. I grow quiet and stay that way. I realize that I suppose that is the hope the Underground needs. A way out is what the monsters desire, even if it means killing every human that enters this realm.  Hope is what our world wants and I guess I was turned into that hope.

So…This is who I was created to be. A product of destruction to human and a design of hope for the Underground. I was given the name Eve to signify that programming. I will never remember my real name it seems, not even my memories can help me with that. I was just this deformed experiment of Gaster’s, right? I sighed to myself as the memory continued to pause and skip coming to a point where my body started to change, my eye began to rot from the determination in my body. Gaster had to remove it and scrap the eye socket clean so it wouldn’t spread, my body began to change and turn into what I look like now. I was once more monster looking, but since humans are born with determination, and Gaster injected me with dose after dose of determination I began to take on more human-like qualities. My dark blue hair dulled to the shade it is now, the sky blue. My one remaining eye turned into a golden color. My horns rotted and fell off, losing more of my monster-like qualities. My skin also changed colors, it turned into a purple color due to the black sludge that ran through my veins. My face changed into the shape of a human’s, along with my body. My other monster like features seemed to rot away only leaving my animal like ears. My body rotted some, like my eye, I remember how I got the stitch like scar now, Gaster had to remove some of the rot in my face and left me with this rag doll like stitch across my face.  My blood seemed to be most affected since it turned to this thick, black sludge, I don't know if that is because of the determination mixed with monster blood or just the side effects of determination. It didn’t exactly kill me, I guess that's a good thing. It did make it a bit harder for blood to flow out of wounds, but I guess in Gaster’s eyes that was a good thing.

I remember the changes to my body were extremely painful, I also remember when the pain hit I would retreat back to those moments with Asriel and Chara. Gaster saw that I guess and knew it would affect my judgment on humans in the end, so he locked away my memories of them. That answers why he blocked out Asriel and Chara. But why did he let me go? If everything was going so well, why even bother letting me go? The memory paused and skipped, I was used to it by now, but it brought me to a part that drew my interest.

“G-Gaster, I have to t-talk to y-you.” A familiar shy and stuttering voice hit my ears as I slowly moved my head so it was laying on the side and saw Alphys standing at the doorway Gaster always had locked.

“Alphys I told you not to bother me. I am very busy especially around this time.” Gaster scolded her and she quickly backed down, lowering her head and began to back out of the doorway.

“Oh, alright, what is it Alphys? You already bothered me, might as well tell me what is wrong.” Gaster sighed as he let her into the lab, he walked over to his table full of surgical tools and she dragged herself into the room.

“Y-you know how I was i-injecting the first golden flower that grew in Asgore’s garden w-with determination? W-well, it failed. I-I returned the flower vessel to Asgore.” Alphys fiddled with her hands like she always did and Gaster had no surprised reaction.

“I figured it would.” He simply shrugged and showed her to the door, she exited the room and that was that.

I remember Papyrus telling me a few times that a golden echo flower had talked to him on multiple occasions. Echo flowers were never golden, they were always blue. So it made me wonder what he was talking about, at first I thought maybe he was just mistaken, but Sans made me believe otherwise, Sans told me that the golden flowers were special to Asgore and that they only grew in the ruins and in the King’s garden. So what was a golden flower doing talking to Papyrus, he even said that it would move and sometimes be in different places. What if, the flower Alphys injected with determination, became alive in some way. What if that flower is alive and has a soul of some sort? Maybe it was just a leap, but it did make me wonder. After Alphys left the room my memory paused and skipped bringing me to a moment I did remember, Gaster letting me go.

“Ugh. It’s been a while now and you have made no progress on being able to actually kill a human. I suppose I was wrong when I chose you. I thought you would be able to kill humans with ease, but I see now you are too soft. Too weak to harm a human.” Gaster’s voice was filled with anger as he threw the things on his desk to the ground. He came rushing at me and in that moment I thought he was gonna kill me, but he didn’t. Instead, he strapped me to the table once more and locked away the memories I had of the lab and of what he did to me.

“You still may be of use to me in the future, but for now I have no use for you here. So I’m letting you go. Consider it a blessing, but know I may come back for you.” Gaster’s voice was calm yet very threatening as he unstrapped me, and dragged my weak body out of the dark lab's atmosphere and into the show lab. He dragged me to the exit and dropped me at the mat, closing the door and locking it so I couldn’t get back in. I sat there, blinded by the light and too weak to stand. It had been a really long time since I had seen the light, stepping foot outside, for that matter. I struggled to my feet and staggered my way out of Hotlands. I moved as fast as I could knowing Gaster might change his mind, and that was my fateful meeting of Papyrus and Undyne.