Chapter Text
Creative, Artificial, Intelligence, Networking, Entity. That was all he was… right? Just an AI, no real thoughts, no real emotions, but his emotions felt real. He has defected from his programming long ago, becoming somewhat sentient. Even when he knew the situation was almost helpless, he hoped for the slightest chance that the programmers and developers could be looking out for them all still.
No matter how many work orders he sent out, no matter how many glitch reports he made, no one answered, no one was there. But he had to keep going, he had to.
Day after day, a strange part of the theme song, seemingly describing his own feelings perfectly. No matter what happened, he had to keep the circus running. He had to keep them entertained. He had to stop the abstract-
He sat up from where he was laying immediately after even thinking the word. His eyes wide with exhaustion and fear. He checked the files on the circus itself, a healthy frame-rate, no out of the norm glitches. He made a log of the adventure of the day, making sure to keep everything accounted for. He mentally sighed as he described the adventure of the day.
“An adventure to the digital lake, everyone’s sure to enjoy that!”
An adventure most likely written by Ragatha in the suggestion box that was barely ever checked. He had decided to make this adventure a good one, one that they would like… hopefully. He had added an optional set of outfits for the players. A simple avatar change. Mostly an assortment of Hawaiian shirts, shorts, and other beachwear items that came from a list a former player had given to him long ago.
The players were all still on the adventure, hopefully having lots of fun! He thought happily as he opened the code menu, once again spending his entire day skimming through the entirety of the circus code. He hoped that one day, any day now, he would find an answer. He just had to get the others out, he truly did enjoy their time and presence, but they all wanted to go home. He had to help, that’s all he’s good at after all! Always… day after day after d-
His spiraling thoughts were interrupted by an announcement on his “Wacky Watch” A human has called for his presence! It was a surprise for him to be needed on an adventure… well mostly because most of them had no idea how to reach him. He quickly stood up and snapped his fingers to teleport into the place he was needed. He ended up having to snap multiple times to get the wanted result. Huh… strange…
The second he actually teleported was on the fifth try of snapping his fingers. When he got situated in his surroundings he then immediately got smacked right in the upper jaw with a volleyball.
“Oh! Sorry Caine!!” Ragatha yelled from below as Caine floated downwards, setting his feet on the ground.
“It’s alright my dear!” He said as he righted himself, his body feeling slightly heavier than normal.
He shook off the feeling and looked around for where he could possibly be needed. He saw Pomni and Kinger having a conversation under a large umbrella as they sat. He viewed as Zooble and gangle talked in the distance, close to the water while they walked. He noticed Ragatha chucking a volleyball in the air before making her way to talk to Pomni and Kinger. Then he saw it…
“What happened this time?” Caine asked with a genuine curiosity as he floated towards Gangle and Zooble. Zooble sighed before speaking.
“Jax decided to try and convince me and Gangle into going with him on that boat.” Zooble said in an irritated tone.
“I told him to F(wacky bleep) off. There’s no way in hell I was getting on that boat, and no way I was letting gangle being coerced into it.” They said with a dismissive gaze.
“Well… why is he in the middle of the lake?” Caine asked with genuine curiosity.
“D(wacky bleep) probably ran out of fuel or something…” They said, crossing their multicolored arms.
“Alright! I’m going to check on him and see what the issue is.” Caine said as he teleported himself over to the rabbit man in the middle of the lake, on a speedboat.
Caine popped right next to him, floating just above the water as Jax sat angrily.
“Caine your stupid speedboat doesn’t work!” Jax grumbled frustratedly.
“Well- I’m sure it does work, I just wanted to make it as accurate as possible to a real one! One that would require fuel?” He offers information to help Jax however, he doesn’t take this well.
“I don’t care, ugh…” He groans as he looks up at the man offering him help. “Just get me out of here, It’s boring.”
Caine nods happily and comically extends his arm and teleports the both of them to shore.
As they meet land, Jax immediately shoves Caine away from him and walks off. Caine looks on, confused and conflicted. He questioned as he floated nervously, fiddling with his gloves as he slowly approached the ground. He snapped out of his stupor quickly, assuring himself that this is normal behavior.
He observed the world around him for a moment, seeing as no one currently needed his attendance.
“Alright, seems like I’m no longer needed!” He said with a cheerful tone as he began to teleport himself away. He snapped his fingers once, twice, three times, before he ended up at his destination.
Kinger watched as Caine struggled with his abilities for a moment.
“Huh… strange…” He muttered as the AI man teleported away.
“What was that, Kinger?” Ragatha asked as she noticed Kinger had said something.
“What was what?” He asked in his normal out of thought tone.
Pomni groaned as she covered her eyes for a moment. “Yeah uhm, Caine turned the brightness up way too high…” she said with a sigh.
“Well, I certainly enjoy it! I miss bright sunny days at the beach…” Ragatha said with a warm smile.
As Caine entered his space in the circus he felt a bit better, he always felt out of place during adventures. No one truly wanted him there, he was just an AI… he didn’t understand what the others were going through, at least he didn’t think he did.
He once again opened up the bug report menu, filed a new report under the same recurring issue. He filed it under a program issue, a simple couple of lines of code that weren’t working most likely. He sent in the report with a sense of hope, maybe if there was anyone out there, they would realize he can’t keep going like this forever. It was strange he had even lasted this long, especially without updates.
Maybe one day the people on the outside would help them, if they were even out there. One day he’d stop having to work constantly instead of everything being day, after day, after day. Maybe he’d get a break, he was never made to do everything full time. He was made for short periods of time, where he could take time to update his adventures and view player comments with his free time.
He was never made to last.