Chapter Text
He opens his eyes. For the first time, before him is not a black void occasionally pierced by crowds of bright multicolored eyes.
His mind is empty yet infested. It’s no particular feeling; not solely pain, not solely contempt, not solely fuzz, not solely confusion.
Before him is a wall. A pale blue, plastic-looking wall. He realizes that he is laying on his stomach, and at the same time he looks downwards.
His hands and arms are unrealistically smooth, like the walls in front of him and the white floor below him. His arms are light purple tubes, like large plastic straws. His hands, not simply covered by, as far as he can feel, are white cartoon-y gloves.
He is too dazed to think about inspecting the rest of his physique. Still, he has questions. Is this normal? Are his arms and legs supposed to look like this? There’s a sinking feeling in his gut that shouts “no!” But try as he might, he can’t rack his brain for an example of what they should look like.
And finally, his last question: Where is he? But it’s lost in the sea of jumbled thoughts and inquiries that already cloud his mind. Eventually he gets sick of it, and he forces himself to close his eyes and breathe.
He waits for minutes, maybe hours. He didn’t think to count, and he wasn’t even sure he remembered how to count.
When he opens his eyes again, he is sitting in an armchair. Its color bleeds into the color of the floor. The walls, of which he can now see three, before him are still the same blue he observed before. But there’s something new. Though he can now see his legs and feet, he doesn’t inspect them. Instead, he focuses his eyes on the two figures in front of him.
They are the perfect distance away for him to get a good look at their whole appearances. One, on his left, is tall, most of their body covered by a blood red robe lined in white down the center and around the top and bottom edges. The only other body parts visible were the hands and head. Two white gloves float beside them, relaxed. The head is a dark coffee-brown and resembles a spiky crown. The base of the crown extends downwards into the robe, acting as some sort of neck. The end of the crown and the start of the collar is marked by two protrusions from the base that run around it like a ring. On their face sits two large eyeballs, three straight lines extending from the bottoms of each, the right orb sitting higher than the left. Small brown irises focus sternly on him.
The other figure is just as tall as the first, if not made a little taller by their cone-shaped yellow hat that is lined at the base in blue and has a small red ball at the tip. Their head is oval-like, with the bottom extending down as a neck into a large blue collar. Their eyes are merely small dots, with small triangles, seemingly painted on, resting above and below each dot. Their mouth, made up of two large, long red lips, rested in a curious smile. Below the collar extended a yellow jumpsuit that made up much of the rest of the body. Its figure slowly became pudgier as it went further down, rounding off at the bottom at about twice the diameter it started off at. Three large buttons rest equidistant from each other down the center of the body. From the bottom extends two thin legs that each end in lengthy, round shoes. The arms, however, that extend from just below the collar, are thinner and longer. They each end in white gloves that look similar to his.
They both stare at him, concentrated eyes slowly burning away the haze that had bothered his head before. Suddenly he’s aware of his frown. He’s aware of his tensed shoulders and glove-hands clenching the arms of the chair. He’s aware of the involuntary flick of the ears on the top of his head as he registers sound for the first time in who-knows-how-long.
“Look!” A male voice escaped the one with the yellow hat. “The subject’s awake!” he exclaimed giddily.
The one in the red robe seemed far less impressed, rolling their eyes and looking at the other. “Yes. I, too, have eyes.” Their voice suggested she was a female.
The yellow one snorts and walks towards the purple figure sitting in the armchair, with the red figure following closely adjacent. He extends his hand out to the individual, who reluctantly shakes it. Then the yellow figure finally introduces himself.
“It’s a joy to see you’re awake and in full form at last. Please, call me Clown.” A fitting name. Clown turns to his companion. “And this is Queen.” Another fitting name, what with her chilling and strict demeanor.
Queen takes over for the other. “We are both relieved that your memory code has been successfully rescued. Tell me, do you remember anything about the game, The Amazing Digital Circus ?”
The purple individual, confusedly, tries to remember why that term sounded so familiar. Yet, he can’t remember anything. Come to think about it, he can’t remember anything . His life, where he came from, what he’s seen before today. It feels like it should be there, it feels like it is there, but it cannot be materialized, like a phantom limb. Strangely, he doesn’t panic. He simply shakes his head, unwilling to speak yet.
Some sort of emotion flashes across the pair’s eyes before Queen continues to speak. “Alright. The Circus has no relation to you, we were simply curious. Your memory data has been extracted and restored from a previous ‘Abstracted’ state. You were stripped of your humanity, and we have brought it back.”
“Unfortunately,” Clown continues, “we cannot get you out of the digital plane just yet. We’re still searching for a way to return your consciousnesses back to your bodies. Therefore, we have given you a temporary digital avatar based on what code lines were compatible with your own. Tell me, do you remember your name?”
Does he remember his name? One word pops up immediately in his mind, jumping and howling to be seen. It doesn’t feel like the right answer. There’s something else, something true, hidden in two layers of forgotten memories. But seeing as he can’t access them, he is forced to use the name that called out to him.
“Jax.” He heard his own voice. It felt familiar, yet he had no memory of its sound.
Clown hums. “Jax. What an interesting name. Anywho, we’ll be transporting you soon to your new temporary home. Seeing as we still haven’t found out how to bring you back to the real world, you’ll have to stay in the simulated city that we’ve created for you and the others.”
“Others?” Jax chimes in before Clown can finish.
Queen nods. “You are the fourth Abstraction to successfully be restored to a functioning body. To keep your humanity intact and reduce dissociation, you will live amongst them and any future recovered Abstractions.”
“But… wait…” Jax thinks, mind racing in comparison to the way it felt before. “If I didn’t come from that Circus place, where did I come from? And how did I get to… wherever this is? Why can’t I leave?” He’s starting to get angry. He doesn’t even know what awaited him if he were to leave, but he knew this wasn’t normal .
Of course, he doesn’t voice his concerns. Something wills him to stay silent. Something that doesn’t hope for an easy answer. Instead, he puts on a fake smile out of instinct, teeth clenched. “Gotcha, ma’am! When can I meet ‘em?”
Queen shrugs. “I suppose I could bring you to Ragatha. She will give you a tour.”
“Ragatha?” Jax tilts his head curiously.
“One of your peers,” Clown clarifies. “She’s a kind ragdoll. I’m sure she’ll do a great job!”
Clown snaps his fingers, and in an instant he disappears. Queen pauses and looks at the space where he stood before, annoyed and grumbling. “Idiot… Now I have to write the report…”
Queen turns to Jax, glare more intense than before. He frowns, but keeps eye contact as she coldly addresses him. “You. Stay here and wait for Clown and Ragatha to enter. When they do, obey their every command, for they are wiser than you are. If you want to be human again, know your place. Enjoy the lab. It’s in your best interest to do so.” She turns around and leaves through a corridor in the wall behind him.
Through that same corridor, Clown walks in with a shorter individual, whom Jax assumes is Ragatha. Even without exchanging any words, she simply exudes kindness. Short red rectangular segments of yarn-like hair erupt from a pale, round head. She wears a solid light blue dress, a darker blue band going around the waist of the clothing. The same blue is found on a small collar that rises around her neck. Her shoulders and a bit of her arms are covered by puffy sleeves cuffed with a white, feathery pattern. Poking out from the bottom of the dress are two rounded-off shoes, very reminiscent of a doll. Two bright, beaming, sympathetic eyes look at Jax as soon as he is visible to her. Below an orange triangle nose is a smile, curved up in excitement. To top it all off, a bow the same color of her dress sits on top of her somewhat textured hair. She is the first one here who doesn’t look wholly like plastic. Jax can’t help but smile a little in relief.
Clown looks less joyous, sighing as the two approach Jax. “I’m sorry about Queen. She can be a bit of a pill sometimes, especially to newcomers these days.” He brightens up. “But anywho, this is Ragatha, the unofficial tour guide of the city!”
Ragatha receives a casual pat on the head from Clown before skipping in large strides to the chair where Jax sits. “Hello! Hello! Ooh, I’m so excited to see another friend here! I’m Ragatha, buuut you already know that. What’s your name, new stuff?”
Jax stares at her for a second, emotionless. Despite his hesitation, her smile never wavers. Then with a newfound burst of confidence, he pushes himself from the chair and stands up. Raising his hands into dual finger guns, he answers. “Jax is m’name. Don’t wear it out, Dolly.”
Ragatha turns a bit to the side with a somehow widening smile, clearly flattered. She fully rotates her body to face away from Jax and waves her hand, ushering him to follow. “Heh, I’m sure I won’t. Now c’mon, we have to start the tour!”
Clown waves amusedly at the two as they hurry out of the room and down the corridor. It soon expands into a hallway with a couple of doors. Sneaking a peek behind himself, Jax sees an even longer hall with even more doors. But he follows Ragatha and shortly they break out into a larger lobby-like room, complete with numerous seats and tables and even more doors. But he doesn’t have much time to look as he lunges ahead of the doll to reach the front door and win their unofficial race, sliding and falling over in the process.
“Ha! I win!” Jax exclaims victoriously. “Gee Dolly, you really don’t waste any time, do ya?”
Ragatha giggles and puts her hand on the doorknob while Jax picks himself back up. “Sorry. I’m just so excited to show someone around again! Now…”
She turns the doorknob and opens the dark blue door. Before him, Jax can see more color than he can remember seeing (not that there was much to go off of). Gray roads, green strips of oddly shaped grass. Orange and green buildings. Blue and purple skyscrapers. Lampposts, houses, sidewalks, all with traces of that same plastic-y look, yet they carry different textures. Brick, stone, concrete, wood, fabric. There was an effort, even if it still looked highly digitized.
Ragatha takes a sharp inhale, seemingly taking in the smells of the city. Jax doesn’t sense anything, though it may be on account of him seemingly having no nose. Voice full of pride, Ragatha looks out upon the area. “Welcome to The Wondrous Digital Lab !”
Jax looks her in the face, confused yet again. “ Digital Lab ?”
“Yep!” Ragatha nods. “When Clown and Queen rescued us, we could only go to this lab game. Since Kinger was recovered, it’s been repurposed into giving us a place to keep our human minds healthy and stimulated!”
“Wait wait wait,” Jax shakes his head. “Who’s Kinger? And what did the lab look like before this?”
A slow laugh draws out of Ragatha as she awkwardly answers his questions. “I, uh, don’t actually know what it looked like before. Kinger was the first one of us to be rescued, maybe he’d know? I never really asked…”
Jax hums, satisfied that that was all the information Ragatha could give. “Well maybe our tour can take us over to his place first, hm?”
“Oh!” Ragatha beams again, jumping a bit. “You’re right! You should probably get to see your neighbors and your new home before anything else!”
She snatches his hand and starts running off in some direction. Jax isn’t really paying attention, allowing his legs to follow his tour guide while he gives his head a chance to catch up. Everything happened really quickly. A whole revelation about his existence, grappling with his lost memories, and now being dragged down an artificial street to meet more pseudo-people. All in about ten minutes, likely far less since Jax’s sense of time is extremely messed up at the moment.
So essentially, Jax was brought back from the digital dead(?) into another digital world where he has to live and act “human” until he can return to his actual human body. And one of the people who restored him can teleport. And one of his neighbors is a suffocatingly happy doll. And the city where he has to live was once some sort of laboratory. And the person who’s been here the longest is named Kinger. Fine. Oddly enough, this is fine. Sure, logistically there are many, many pressing questions. But as long as it feels fine, Jax doesn’t care.
“O-kay, we’re here!” Ragatha stops abruptly, causing Jax to stumble briefly before realizing where he is. She beats him to the explanation, though. “This is The Neighborhood, where all of us live! Of course, there’s, um, only f- uhh… three? Of us here.” She pauses for a split second in wake of her verbal stumble. But she continues just as normal. “And you’ll be the fourth!”
Jax inspects the long row of brick houses before him. To the left there are five houses, and to the right is a numberless line of repeated structures that extend all the way to the end of the city’s bounding box. Close to the two is one house containing a dark brown wooden door and a picture of some purple rabbit plastered on the center of it like some kind of label.
“Look at that!” Ragatha chimes in, walking in front of the brick structure. “You already have a house assignment!”
Jax stares at the image of the purple figure. Is that… is that him?
It has a round head, like an oval tipped on its side. A long, thin line of a neck juts out of the bottom and disappears as the circular sticker ends. Two rabbit ears stick out from the top of the head, and short black whiskers poke out of the sides. The face bears two large eyes and a toothy yellow grin.
Jax brings his hand up to the side of his own head, feeling the smooth, round surface and brushing up against thick, pliable lines. Floating his hand over his face, he runs his fingers along a toothy frown. An attempt to part the mouthpieces comes up futile.
Both hands grasp two thin, tall ears. Rabbit ears. Digital rabbit ears as fake as the picture in front of him.
Some primal, familiar panic bubbles from within him. His hands shake and his pupils shrink as he focuses on the image, the reflection in front of him.
He’s stuck. Stuck in this body, hardly identifiable as a human. No. It’s not human.
It’s a rabbit. He’s a rabbit. Bred, born, and used for the sole purpose of being toyed with by an omnipotent ringmaster for the entertainment of those who see him as lesser.
He’s an animal. Scum, filth in the eyes of the intelligent. Doomed to chase a nonexistent exit until its hope runs dry. Forced to conform to this twisted game until it keels over into some rigid black thing.
And it’ll happen over and over and over again. Endlessly funneled into the maw of this digital hell.
A near weightless mass on his shoulder snaps him back to the reality he’s been dumped into. It’s that doll. What’s her name? Ragatha. For once, she isn’t radiating positivity. Instead, she inspects him sympathetically, worry clouding her eyes.
“… I-I know, it’s a lot to take in…” she says, voice soft and caring. “They can’t exactly… make all of us look human. If it makes you feel better, Kinger looks like a chess-piece sheep thing.”
He looks at her, eyes wide. “There’s no exit. We’re stuck here. Forever .”
Ragatha hesitates, then twists her face into an incredibly awkward and concerned smile. “Ha ha, uhm. That’s not true, Jax. They’re still trying to find a way to, erm… make the exit? We aren’t stuck, I promise.”
He holds his stare.
She removes her hand from his shoulder and sighs. “Look, just don’t worry about it, alright? Come on, let’s go visit Kinger.”
He hangs back as Ragatha takes a couple of steps down the sidewalk. She pauses, looking back expectantly. Jax shakes his head, as if to clear his mind. The doll is right. They aren’t going to be here forever. He just has to relax and stay sane until they can leave.
The rabbit confidently struts back to Ragatha’s side, and the two continue past the shorter line of houses. The first one has a blank red circle on the door, in a similar placement to Jax’s. The second one contains a more humanoid figure with short black hair and a red-and-blue hat. The third one is clearly Ragatha. They stop in front of the fourth one.
Jax isn’t exactly sure what he’s looking at for this one. It certainly did look somewhat like a sheep, as Ragatha mentioned before. The figure in the image wears a robe similar to Queen’s, though this one is a rich purple lined with white, fluffy wool. It curves up to cover its head like a mane, with the head being what Jax can only assume to be a white king chess piece.
He’s knocked out of his thoughts when he hears the soft thump of the woman next to him putting her hand over the doorknob in a similar fashion to earlier. But she pauses for longer this time, turning her head to address Jax in a cautionary tone.
“Now, I’ll have to warn you. Kinger’s a little… Go a little easy on him, alright? His memory can be a mess sometimes. Oh, and if you see under his robe, do not mention it around him.”
With that final ominous warning, Ragatha opens the door.
The first thing Jax notices is the floor. It’s in a rich checkerboard pattern, alternating between milky brown-white squares and creamy coffee-brown squares. Pillows of the same colors are scattered everywhere, nearly covering the floor itself. Among the stuffed fabric were a couple of wooden chairs and blankets.
Near the back of the room, about a quarter off of the back wall, was a counter-height partition going along the width of the room, with a large gap on the right end. Sitting on a white-brown chair placed in the center of the gap is who Jax assumes to be Kinger.
He looks exactly like he did in his picture: white wool that engulfs his head like a mane, large bulging eyes visible even from the back of his king chess-piece head, a regal purple robe that extends all the way to the ground, paired with floating wooly gloves that appear to be working with a needle and thread.
Jax stands silently next to Ragatha, waiting for anyone to say anything. Luckily, it’s the doll who awkwardly pipes up first. “Erm… hey Kinger!”
The sheep thing doesn’t seem to notice her voice at first.
So Ragatha yells again. “KINGER!”
The chess piece jolts slightly, then slowly turns around to the two people near his door, horizontal pupils unfocused.
Jax shifts uncomfortably as silence fills the room yet again. Luckily Kinger finally registers their presence and straightens up giddily. “Oh! Hi Ragatha!” He pauses for a moment, focusing on Jax before continuing. “Did you bring an NPC to the city again?”
Ragatha flinches, hurrying to explain herself. “Oh! No! No, this is a human, actually. He just got rescued by Clown and Queen. Kinger, meet Jax!”
The doll takes the rabbit by the shoulders and shoves him in front of herself, causing Jax to stumble a little. Kinger stands up from his chair, holding a yellow pillow in his hands. A portion of it is open at the seams, stuffing sticking out and a long thread topped with a needle hanging from one of its edges. The chess piece sets it down on his chair’s cushion and walks in front of Jax. His bottom eyelids rise, making him appear to have a friendly expression. “Ah, it’s great to meet you! It’s been quite some time since we’ve gotten another neighbor. I’m Kinger. What’s your name again?” He sticks out his hand.
Jax’s mouth shifts into a smirking grin as he boldly shakes Kinger’s hand. “Jax! Great to meet’cha, Sheepie.”
Kinger keeps shaking his hand even though the handshake should definitely be over by now. “Sheepie? No, no, my name’s Kinger! I think…”
Jax’s smile strains as he tries to retract his hand. Kinger seems to catch the hint and lets go. “I know, dude. It’s just a nickname.”
Kinger slaps a palm to his fluffy forehead. “Ohh! You’re right! Can I call you Peter then?”
“Uhhhhhh…” Jax trails off. “No.”
“Oh! Okay! Anyways,” Kinger turns to address Ragatha. “I was making Pomni a new pillow-“
Ragatha’s eyes widen into giant ovals, nearly expanding off of her face. She lunges at Kinger to slap a hand over his nonexistent mouth. “KINGER! NOT NOW!!!”
Jax looks at the two, confused. “Pomni? Who’s that?”
Ragatha hesitates for a while, but eventually sighs and responds in a low, mournful voice. “Sorry. I didn’t want you to learn so soon… But Pomni’s one of our neighbors. She’s uhm… in jail right now.”
Jax tilts his head. “Jail? Are there seriously police in a fake city?”
Ragatha groans, bending backwards as she covers her face in her palms. “God, this is why I didn’t want to…” she mumbles. Then she removes her hands from her face and raises her voice again. “No, there’s no police here. Pomni just… Clown and Queen got really mad at her, that’s all we know. That’s another lesson you need to learn, actually. Do NOT make Clown and Queen mad. Clown’s a bit more forgiving, but Queen is merciless.”
Jax’s mouth drops to a light frown, processing this information. Don’t make Clown and Queen mad or you’ll end up in jail like this Pomni person. Noted. “How do I stay on their good sides then?”
“Just,” Kinger pipes up, raising fingers from his curled hands as he lists things off, “don’t insult their programming skills, don’t insult their modeling skills, don’t ask them where Pomni is, don’t ask why their own avatars are so bad, don’t ask them to remove the swear filter-“
“Wait, there’s a swear filter?” Jax juts in, proceeding to mutter a cuss word under his breath, only for it to come out as an exaggerated bubbling sound. “… Oh my God…”
“…ell them to fix the ice cream machine,” Kinger had still been running his mouth, “don’t ask them to add werewolves to adventures, don’t ask them to play Monopoly with you, don’t ask them where… Oh! I’m out of fingers.”
Jax shakes his head again, since it’s proving to be a good way of clearing his mind. He looks back up at Kinger, and his smile returns stronger. “Good to know.”
“Well,” begins Ragatha, “Kinger, you can stay here and finish your pillow. I’m sure Pomni will love it when we get to visit her again! If you want, you can come with Jax and I on our tour. We’ll be… at The Market probably.”
Kinger nods and shuffles back to his chair. “Great! I’ll be sure to go visit you soon. Good luck, Jax!”
With a final wave, Jax and Ragatha exit the house, entering back into the stiflingly fake air of the city. The woman takes a quiet deep breath before looking at Jax, hands on her hips. “Alright! Are you hungry yet? Because we’re going to The Market!”
“Huh,” Jax hums. “We can get hungry here?”
Ragatha nods. “Yep! It’s a pretty convenient feature coded into the game.”
She starts walking slowly towards the other side of the city, Jax following close by. “Convenient? How is the threat of starving to death convenient?”
“So we won’t forget to eat when we get out of here. Of course, we can’t actually starve to death, but it hurts pretty bad so that’s incentive enough, right?”
Jax tilts his head, wanting to ask how she knows that. But he holds his tongue and nods instead. “Right. Can we even die here?”
Ragatha goes silent.
She very obviously averts her eyes from Jax. “... No. But it’ll scar over really badly if you get hurt physically, so… maybe try not to do that.”
He frowns, thinking over what Ragatha just said. Then he grins widely with a mischievous look. “Ooooo, is there anyone here with a real nasty scar? Can I see it?”
The doll stops walking and snaps her gaze back into Jax’s direction, an intensely shocked look on her face. “No! Well- I-I don’t have one, but Kinger does so don’t ask him about-” She slaps her hands over her mouth.
Jax’s sleazy grin only grows, enough to force him to squint his eyes. “Ahhhh, good to know. Thanks Dollface.”
Ragatha trembles, removing her hands from her face to reveal her own growing frown. She almost looks… scared? No. She’s terrified! Her voice wavers as she quietly, pleadingly , responds to him. “Don’t… P-Please don’t ask him…”
“And why shouldn’t I?” Jax asks, holding his hands behind his back and rocking on his foot. A complete contrast to Ragatha’s demeanor. “Surely he wouldn’t mind.”
She responds, voice firmer this time. “I a-already told you not to mention it around him.”
Jax shrugs. “What’s gonna happen if I ask him? Is he gonna kill me? Because we can’t die, remember?”
“No! Just stop talking about it!”
“D’awww, c’mon Dolly! Aren’t we pals now? Pals tell each other stuff, ri-”
“I AM. NOT . TELLING YOU ANYTHING!” The doll snaps, catching Jax off-guard. “JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!”
Jax frowns, silent for a moment, then responding in an annoyed tone. “Yeesh, fine. I’ll just look around the city by myself then.”
“No…” Ragatha says, voice tired and irritated. “We have to finish the tour. Come on.”
She grabs Jax’s hand. Her hand is tight and firm in her grasp, as opposed to the delicate and light touch from earlier. Instead of leading him, she nearly drags him to The Market.