thefloweryfanclub:

In the True Lab, there’s an odd machine that powers the elevator and some of the screens, apparently.



But something is apparently off about this machine (and not just the fact that it appears to be smiling).

It has a red heart in the middle of it.



Is it a placeholder for a human soul? When turned on, Frisk doesn’t put their soul in it, so it may not be.

Is it an actual human soul? And not just that - a red soul?



There is one unaccounted-for red human soul that isn’t Frisk’s that we know of for sure.

Chara, in life, had a red soul. We know they’re soulless by the events of Undertale: they gave their soul to Asriel, who used it to cross the barrier, after combining their two souls together…

…the combined soul which then got presumably destroyed during the attack, as the two perish upon arriving home. Chara’s dialogue makes it apparent that they, like Flowey, have been reborn without their own soul, so it seems the combined soul is unaccounted for, possibly destroyed.



But then what is this in the machine? And what could its function be?

The machine powers, at the very least, the elevator and the screens in the hallway leading up to it. These screens happen to talk about the creation of Flowey, and, oddly, the screens powered by the strange machine with the red heart…have taken on his appearance:

But it’s possible that the machine has another purpose.

Alphys cuts off her explanation as to have the CORE works in the middle of it.



The True Lab would be the place to house something secret, as it’s implied that only Alphys and possibly Sans know it exists.



If the red heart did turn out to be a seventh human soul, that would raise more questions than it answers.



Why did no one use it, along with the six other souls, to break the barrier? How did it come to be in the machine? Asgore likely wouldn’t have known about it, since he seems to think there are only six human souls, all ones he collected; the jar for the red soul is empty.



(and apparently, the souls must be kept in some kind of container or they “move on” and disappear, as they do in neutral/pacifist endings)



And why keep it secret, and what function is it serving that’s so critical it can’t be used to break the barrier? What happened to it upon everyone leaving the Underground?



If the red heart turned out to be a soul and not just some pretty decoration a spriter added to the smiley-faced machine to make it look spookier, it’s possible that it belonged to Chara.

And if it belonged to Chara, then it could be Chara and Asriel’s still-combined soul.



And since human souls are known to linger after death, on account of their strength,



then their combined soul, being part human and much more powerful, could also have lingered after death, quickly retrieved by some unknown party.



But that’s just a theory.

