What...? Why are you asking...? [He's repeating confusion more than he expected, but something in this conversation has clearly crossed wires. Sans is seemingly jumping - outright flying? - to conclusions, weird ones he has to assume are based on conversational correlation, because what else would it be? Is there something else that Papyrus is too emotionally numb to pick up on...? This, at least, he's bothered by. His fingers drum on the side of his skull as he thinks, near his incomplete temple but not quite on it. The sound is different than it was before circuitry started filling it. Different sensations than metal fingers on bone alone, different than bone on bone. Which is... half the problem, surely.]

Sans, I meant, the computer stuff that's built up in my skull. I... complained about remembering, because... I remember those days. Perfectly. [A vaguely haunted expression, as the change to not feeling the urge to hurt people, doesn't mean the memory of the feeling has faded in the slightest. He can reload it any time.] And it's... somewhat upsetting, to remember that, and not remember other things. So I'm backing up the more important other things!

[Things he would be uncomfortable to ever discover he'd forgotten. Things like cooking lessons with Undyne, or bad movie marathons with his brother, or the costume party, or fragments of his childhood... various pieces of the context of who he is. Even if most of them are shoddy records in comparison to the recent perfect recall, what with blatantly missing pieces. Making proper memories of them will take a degree of splicing things together... Later, though. Now is just a good time for backing things up. And... that's not a good point to stop talking, because then Sans might ask about how perfectly he remembers it. Keep going.]

I think I... accidentally turned something on, or off. To start remembering everything so vividly. [He hesitates again, because it's another thing he's gone out of his way to avoid acknowledging, most of the time. But the reasons for avoiding it were emotional, and don't seem so relevant anymore. One of the benefits of how he's being, one of the reasons he's less bothered than Sans clearly thinks he should be. And besides - it's obvious.]

...After all. There's barely any skeleton to me, anymore. Even in my skull, I'm mostly... robotic. It could be, a robot thing. I never met Mettaton, but he was acting all the time... Maybe, was it all acting? [Sans would know, if anyone, being a good judge of character and doing things at the resort - or at least one, singular and singularly infamous thing. If his run-ins with Mettaton revealed the more famous robot didn't feel things strongly... Then Sans is just being in weird denial, and Papyrus should prepare himself for this to be his new normal.]

...I see. [His voice is quieter than usual, less subdued than simply words. He stares toward the screen, the better to not memorize Sans's expression as he processes this. The sense of continuous monitoring from the eyes in the halo, he's adjusted to, and it's less uncomfortable now than other times. That Sans has come to ask about what's up, and has been confused about what's happening, is evidence that he hasn't been subtly doing this. But. He could. A closed bedroom door would, presumably, not provide privacy.

In the metaphor of landscape and water as the difference between potential (and historical) models of his emotions, and the emotions he's actually experiencing, it's as if Papyrus has just realized the water is actually knee-deep, and also that the floodline goes well over the banks.]

...Thank you for telling me that. [His voice still just a voice, a little stiff and too-formal, and he shakes his head before deliberately adding a little more tone to it. A tone like conceding discomfort, and a hint of promise.] I think... In a few hours. Maybe in the morning, with breakfast?

[He thinks it would hurt Sans, to feel what he's feeling right now, in response to this. Unhelpful. Inefficient. Better to observe how Papyrus feels about sunrise, and oatmeal, and the satisfaction of completing a project.]

...Thank you, Sans. [He offers this before Sans goes, unwittingly while the knife confiscation happens. Even if he's not feeling it, even if it's a formality and obligatory ritual phrase, he offers it again - making eye contact and everything to show the extra sincerity of it. It can't have been easy for sans to offer. That's important.

He's... less grateful, later on. It takes a while to notice, between wrapping up another set of uploads, switching to a new soundtrack, and deciding to finish the task. The cracks in his temples had healed in a rush, but incompletely, and the itching that plagued him for months had become throbbing in a way he'd recognized from some of his earlier transformations - bone dissolving, and giving way. The idea of scraping into his skull might have upset him ordinarily, but now it seemed the sensible thing to do - a preventative measure, before the budding circuitry could start breaking through it. So it's not a pleasant surprise, when he goes to continue, and the knife he'd concluded was the right size was missing.

No sign of it on the floor, nor sign he'd swept it anywhere else - the dust pile was unsmudged, nearly identical to before. It takes some investigating before catching the signs that the differences are from something pinching the pile, and presumably the knife. Only one likely culprit. He debates pounding on his brother's bedroom door to ask for it back, but if Sans was so sneaky in taking it, he'd probably deny having done so - and, possible, had some reason in doing so. Perhaps... wanting Papyrus to be back to normal, before making any more permanent modifications to his limited bone. It's the kind of thing he can imagine himself wanting.

...Ideally, he won't come to regret speeding the process up. But he can at least recognize that he might, and so make a point of gathering the dust into a bin to add to the rest he's collected. And wait until morning, at least, to let the annoyance over the missing knife be part of what Sans feels in him. A nice smokescreen negative feeling, to put up over his lingering unease at the whole idea. If remote emotion sensing works that way. If people don't notice, it at least suggests that all Sans is doing is sensing, and not manipulating... That's something.

A couple more projects fill the night, including another search through his programming for a self diagnostic that measures things like emotions. Plenty of things for identifying shorts, notifying him of damage, even something for - like Sans had started offering - compressing the various things saved. Nothing that gets into the relatively vague properties of emotions. Relatively vague, because the uploaded memories from post-transformation do have various forms of metadata describing emotions, cues that add up to experiencing it something like he had before. The most recent memories he backed up, from clothes shopping early in the switch, are even more packed with opinions and constantly shifting emotions. The older memories... differently formatted, with only the occasional tag. Maybe a diagnostic tool will start to form, now that he's aware of the need for one. Maybe Doctor Kassabian has one, or advice on writing one. But... As uncomfortable as revealing this stuff to Sans might be, far worse to open up that much to anyone else. No. Breakfast, and seeing what comes of it.

He's in the kitchen before dawn, working on a more complicated recipe than 'boil water, add to oatmeal.' Pancakes, but with the smallest size batteries in place of other additions. It's an oddly savory flavor combination, but a novelty that might be interesting for Sans to feel. More smokescreen options. If it works.]