#illtrytobegood

The focus of today’s theory is figuring out what we can about the Alpha Timeline, specifically what we see in LLA’s alternate blog, @unknown-20xx. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this strange side comic, Unknown 20xx follows a group of askers left in the remnants of the Alpha Timeline, from which AFAF’s Sans and Flowey originate from. They were separated from it and brought into the AFAF timeline, which we’ll call the Beta timeline, after Flowey blew up the Core and performed a Reset. Due to the magic of an asker, they are currently (at the time of me writing this) back in the Alpha timeline again, in a time before everything went downhill, as we see in Unknown 20xx. That blog shows the timeline in a state of ruin, with only 13 of over a thousand monsters still alive. Time seems to be frozen for everything but the survivors, and magic cannot be regenerated. The entire latter half of the Underground is more or less destroyed. 

So what happened? What point in time are we seeing through this side blog? My theory is that it occurs after Sans and Flowey make it back to the Beta timeline, whenever their time in Alpha ends. This would make sense with Papyrus saying that everything started going downhill right after the two left, and we know it couldn’t be after they first wind up in the Beta timeline because in that same conversation, Papyrus shows familiarity with the askers, beings he was clearly unaware of when this event began, and mentions that Flowey talked with them, with us, frequently. Flowey only started communicating with the askers a few weeks after he came to the Surface, when Frisk invited us. There would be no way for him to communicate with us beforehand, securing this place in the timeline to be after Sans and Flowey leave and things start going bad. 

“But FriskHeart!” I hear you say. “Unknown said that they had just gotten back from terrorizing Flowey in his nightmares while they were walking through an empty Snowdin! And Papyrus’ letter got delivered to Sans before they even arrived there!” The answer is simpler than you give it credit for. It’s just time travel. The Unknown went into the past, which was the present for us askers, to torment Flowey, and we sent a letter into the past, which, again, was our present. We’re seeing two different timelines at two different periods of time. This fact is going to be extremely helpful for figuring out what’s going to happen in AFAF, but first we need to understand things here, so let’s move on.

Okay, so we know this blog’s basic place in the timeline. It occurs after this event ends and our heroes (?) return to Beta. This would explain in part why Unknown said that what we were seeing was the consequences of our actions. We had nothing to do with the Alpha Timeline until now, when we pulled this stunt to bring Sans and Flowey back. Let’s move on to the next major enigma: the messages in the Echo Flowers.

While walking through Waterfall with Unknown we hear a string of messages in the Echo Flowers as we go. The earlier messages say things like “Chara, where are you? Chara?” and “I know. You’d never hurt me Chara... I trust you.” As the askers walked farther, the messages grew more unsettling. “Where are we going?” “Chara, I’m scared... I don’t know if it’s a good idea to-” The voices end with “Chara, what are you doing...?” “Chara, s-stop!” “Chara, p-please, don’t you re-” “It’s me, As-” before being cut off with a scream. There’s only one message left, from a different speaker, who seems to be crying. “Asriel, why won’t you try to defend yourself from me?”

Okay, that’s a lot to take in. The first speaker is clearly Asriel, who’s being led off by the final speaker, Chara, who seems to kill him for some reason? Oooookay then. That’s...odd. So what exactly is going on here? Well, there’s not much we can go off of right now, but we do have some clues that could point us in the right direction. First, it’s important to mention that this is NOT a recounting of when Chara and Asriel first died. Flowey has confirmed that in the Alpha Timeline things basically went he same way as before up to a point, meaning that the buttercup incident still happened, and Asriel died in the throne room, not in Waterfall. Also, the chances of the Echo Flowers retaining those voices for so long seems pretty unlikely. But if it’s not that first time when they died, when is it? The only place in the timeline that would make sense would be some time while Sans and Flowey are in Alpha, but that couldn’t be possible...right? And yet, there’s nowhere else for it to fit. If it had taken place before, then Flowey wouldn’t have been waiting for Chara to wake up, because they already would have, and it couldn’t take place after because he wouldn’t be there. He’d be back in Beta. So...it would seem like it has to take place some time before Sans and Flowey return to the Beta timeline.

So what does that mean for the story? A LOT. If this is true, that means that Chara would have to return in some form (most likely in a ghost form or something similar, as we see that their grave is undisturbed) and be made to try and kill their brother, even though they don’t seem to want to. This would also mean that Flowey would likely...become Asriel again?! There’s no way! Right? And yet, that would be the only thing to make sense. The Echo Flowers clearly repeat Asriel’s voice, not Flowey’s, and while Flowey can change his voice and has before, he doesn’t seem to find the need to to so in front of Chara. In the M!A event “Another Omegaful Life”, one of the askers brings back Chara and Flowey retains his typical yellow text for the most part. He’s actually used his Asriel voice with SANS more than he has Chara. How exactly he would turn back is hard to say, as he’s only been able to do so one time during the M!A “A Soul For Flowey”, when an asker gave him their soul. This is not a great source for what it would take to help him become Asriel again as we have no idea how powerful an asker soul is compared to a monster or human soul, and the event was mainly powered by the strength of M!A anyway. However, if the Echo Flowers are at all reliable, him turning back via sciencey stuff, M!A, or something else seems to be the most logical option. And all of this may very well occur when he and Sans are in the Alpha Timeline, as they are right now.

It’s also important to try and answer the question of whether or not Asriel actually died. The final page with his voice in the Echo Flowers is tagged as “death mention”, yet Chara says “Why DON’T you try to defend yourself from me?” The use of the word don’t instead of didn’t, as well as the the fact that Sans and Flowey will make it back to Beta alive (hopefully), suggests that Chara didn’t kill Asriel. “But what about Unknown saying that Asriel was ‘sleeping’?” I hear you protest. Yes, that could mean that he died, but it could also have to do with Flowey currently sleeping at the time, over in the Beta timeline, and be purposefully meant to mislead us. It does have a darker implication to it, but that isn’t necessarily enough to be considered proof.

After Sans and Flowey return to Beta, things get pretty self-explanatory. The Core, along with Hotland and New Home, get destroyed and all but about 13 monsters die. Thanks to the time-space shenanigans going on, the entire world save for the survivors remains frozen in time. Plants don’t grow and lost magic can’t be regenerated. Since the Echo Flowers are now frozen in time, they repeat the same messages over and over throughout the Underground. Papyrus becomes a scavenger for the survivors, Alphys tries to use her science knowledge to help in any way that she can, and Toriel nears falling down. The askers manage to heal her before taken out by two figures, who seem to be...Sans and Flowey? Okay, what’s going on there?

First off, we can confirm that these two are NOT the Sans and Flowey we’ve come to know and tolerate. This Sans has an eye injury and a different outfit, and the Flowey has red eyes. The Flowey we know (who I’ll refer to as Alpha Flowey) has never had those bright red eyes, especially when paired with the smiling expression. This alternate Flowey bears a much closer resemblance to the smiling red-eyed flower Alpha Flowey saw when he was having a panic attack while having tea with Toriel and Papyrus. The have the same smile and red eyes. Beyond that, the two are tagged at the bottom of the post as Beta Sans and Beta Flowey.

It’s hard to say exactly who these two are, but my best guess is that they’re the Sans and Flowey from the Beta timeline, the ones replaced by Alpha Sans and Flowey. The Alpha pair seems to believe that the Beta pair just ceased to exist and they took their place, but they’ve been wrong before. And with the name similarities, it would definitely fit.

Now we only have one major question remaining, one I’m not sure of myself. Who is Unknown? Are they the personification of “the anomaly”? Or are they something else entirely? I’m eager to hear any fellow theorists’ thoughts on the subject as we figure out what to do next.