Chapter Text
No one had spoken much. No one had much to say. Even Caine had kept to himself for the past several quotidian digital cycles, which is not to say days, but rather to say, quite plainly, quotidian digital cycles. Everyone considered themselves smart enough (or, at the very least and considering recent happenings, experienced enough) to be unsettled by his silence.
But no one wanted to break it. Somehow, something about speaking with each other felt too much like admitting it was true. It felt a bit like going to your mom when you're nine years old to admit to her you'd pinched a candy bar from the corner store, knowing she would make you go back and pay for it, and knowing you'd see that disappointed look in her eye, and knowing that she would never look at you the same way.
It was a shame, really. In two ways. First, it was a shame that it had happened, a pity, a tragedy, a miserable situation. Second, what they felt was shame. Shame for being wrong. Shame for being right. In fact, it felt a bit like Adam and Eve hiding themselves from God in the garden, rough garments of leaves draped over them in a last ditch attempt to cover up what had never been shameful before, but was shameful now, just because someone had brought it to their attention. And, if you really, really squinted, it was a shame entirely unlike what Cain felt when he killed his brother Abel for offering better sacrifices to the Lord, for being the Lord's favorite, for doing what Cain was not willing to do.
Of course, no one in the Circus had a Bible on them, and even if they had, they had all reached that level of unforgiving anger where they would probably burn it before reading it. That was unfortunate; they may have been able to find some humor in the thematic parallels of their situations. They would have, at the very least, had something to throw at Caine, as blasphemous as it would have been.
All of that is besides the point. What is the point? The point is that all six of them (having graduated from previously just being Pomni) considered themselves to be in Hell.
If Hell was brightly colored, absurdly childish, disorientingly patterned, irritatingly musical, and unrelentingly friendly.
Dante Alighieri said Hell was layered and complex, with special parts and bits for different people to go through different punishments. That seemed fitting.
John Milton said Hell had really good architecture. That was, uh, less fitting.
Margaret Hale said Hell was white, snow-white. The only person in the entire Circus who would understand that reference was Ragatha, but she was too busy burying herself in maladaptive daydreams about her horses and fighting off the urge to find some stupid sauce and lose herself to the heady feeling of idiocy to really think much about descriptions of Hell in her favorite period dramas. Ragatha's rapidly declining emotional state disregarded, this was also a inapt description of the Hell currently holding prisoner its six favorite victims.
It hadn't been all bad (the way that a car accident that kills two innocents and a serial killer isn't all bad), because Zooble had finally told Gangle that, screw it, if they were all stuck there forever anyway, there was no point in saving a confession for the real world. The two had been holding hands more, and Gangle had immediately gotten comfortable wrapping her ribbons around Zooble's arm, or neck, or torso piece when they would sit or stand together. Despite the fact that her comedy mask had simply stopped respawning, Gangle would smile every time she was with Zooble.
But they still didn't talk much.
And whether the silence helped or hurt, no one wanted to hypothesize on.
Kinger had been carrying a weight on his shoulders that everyone could see. Pomni and Ragatha had gotten around to making him a patchwork hat-hood-veil hybrid that covered his eyes and kept the majority of the lights out. As soon as they fitted it on him, the brightness of the Circus had increased threefold, which didn't hurt anyone's eyes, since they didn't have optical nerves, but did somehow make their heads hurt. It was a buzzing sensation, but it wasn't a sensation. It was psychological, except they had no brain chemistry. It was a memory, which was simply unfair. It was a memory, and that only made everyone angrier.
For Pomni, things were starting to feel less like Hell and more like Purgatory: a desperate confusion washing back and forth over her like an ocean tide. And, like waves on sand, with each pass more and more of her drifted away, eroded and undermined. No one was angry with her, at least not to the extent that they were expressing it. Ragatha had been as awkwardly kind as ever, making regular check-ins and occasionally bringing Pomni some scarf or hat she had knitted, as though Pomni was in shock and needed to be warmed up and kept under watch.
And as much as Pomni didn’t like to be coddled…she was grateful for Ragatha this time. Too many times since that adventure, she’d found herself teetering on the edge of complete dissociation—abandoning presence for the comfortable distance she could put between herself and this pathetic excuse for reality. Really, what was this besides forced dissociation?
It was still hard for her to look Zooble in the eyes. Their anger when she had hesitated had been real and, even though it had been proven the whole debacle was a lie, Pomni wasn’t entirely comfortable with the part she had played in the situation. It was better to let things simmer down, cool, and slide into nothing between her and her friend, and they could go back to being chill with each other.
Unless…
And it was the “unless” of the situation that really had Pomni locked in Purgatory. It was the “unless” that made her sick to her stomach. It was the “unless” that pushed her to the edge of tears. And it was the “unless” that, one night, had pushed a bit too hard and tipped her over the verge until she found herself sobbing in her room, alone and cold and afraid, until she couldn’t handle the sensation of isolation any longer and crept through her door and across the hall to Jax’s door, at which point she hesitated, balked, and lowered her hand, too afraid to knock, instead leaning her back against the door and sliding down until she sat on the floor, face buried in her hands and sobbing quietly to herself. That had lasted until the door opened up behind her and she fell in backwards, only to be grabbed roughly by both shoulders, swung inside, and sat on a plush chair by Jax, who looked thoroughly annoyed at having to deal with her.
What was the “unless”? Oh, she hated the “unless.”
Unless... Caine was lying about lying. Unless Caine lied about half of it. Unless there was a way out, but that wasn't it, and Caine just wanted to break their hope so they would stay with him. Unless that was the way out, and Caine was lying about Shrimptown. Unless Pomni's hesitation, which had made space for Jax's panicked choice, really was the turning point in their ever being able to leave.
She didn't really believe that, though.
No, Caine had been working on this since before Pomni had even arrived. He had said as much on her first day when she had gotten lost in the Void after falling through exit door after exit door, pleading for some way home. Home had become a strange term since them. It had become even stranger since that adventure. For the first time, Pomni had been forced to really think about home.
Everyone else had already gone through this months or years before Pomni arrived, and, though they still wanted out, though they still thought about seeing the people they missed, home, for them, had morphed and shifted into a more vague, intangible thing. It wasn't the Circus. No. No, not ever. But it had to be something, because otherwise, what was this? Like a permanent vacation none of them had asked to go on, their stay felt extended and thinned: there was no more fun to be had, only frustration and a growing desire for something that was really their own.
Pomni never thought she'd really miss crunching numbers.
And yet.
And it didn't really matter, since, again, none of them were talking, but Jax was in a state, and that rankled everyone else. There were those who didn't think he deserved to be anything but apologetic, preferably groveling and, ideally, dead. And then there were those who felt bad for him, for the position Caine had put them all in and he, specifically, had fallen for. And then there were those who were confused, unsure of what to do with him, and really just avoided him.
It would do no good to give a descriptive list of who was in which category, as the population of each one shifted and changed every few minutes, as everyone struggled to come to terms with their situation and, more specifically, the fact that they were still in the situation and not, as previously mentioned, home.
No, wait. No. One category had a steady headcount; those who thought Jax should be dead stayed at a resolute Population: One (1).
Population: Jax.
It was less about the guilt he felt for potentially trapping everyone in the Circus for the rest of their digital eternity (why feel guilt when he was RIGHT?), and more about--well, did a guy need a reason for wanting to be dead? Honestly, at this point, he ought to be. Really, it was an impressive commentary on his mental fortitude that he was still around and as purple as ever, as opposed to being a sharp, black, eye-filled wad of gunk that looked like something the plumber pulled out of the shower drain of an apartment that hadn't been cleaned since the 1970s. Everyone ought to be impressed, really, by the fact that he hadn't tried pushing the limits of how unkillable their avatars really were. (Well, he had tried that years ago, a few months after getting here in the first place, and he'd been more creative and energetic back then, so, really, why bother trying again?) Everyone ought to be impressed by the way he hadn't abstracted or tried to goad anyone else into it, and had instead sequestered himself in his room, where he could sit without his stupid, idiotic mask on, and float on the edge of consciousness.
Did he enjoy the hallucinations and nightmares? Well, not before the fact. And definitely not after the fact. Whatever they were, his subconscious and whatever instincts he had left screamed at the dark corners of his room, and the hands reaching for him, and the lovely disconnected peace of place his mind went to when it wasn't terrified that the others were outside worrying about him.
There was nothing he wanted less than worry. Nothing that would make him angrier. Because there was nothing to worry about. He was fine.
He was certainly more fine that Pomni, who had, one night, walked up to his door, stood there, then slumped against it and started crying.
He wasn't stupid, he could tell the sound of her footsteps apart from everyone else's. Besides, no one else in this place would be dumb enough to approach his door, his room, him, for...what, comfort? Was that what she had wanted? There was no way to know for certain, so he hadn't offered any. He'd just gotten sick of the sound of her hiccuping sobs and the way her shaking shoulders had rattled his door, and the tiny sniffs and whimpers that would just not stop, and his only options had been to punt her into the digital lake, or to lock her in her own room, or to dump her outside of Ragatha's door (or anyone else's), or to tell her to go to the digital kitchen and get some digital food to make her digital tears stop digitally annoying him, or to gag her and deposit her elsewhere, or to just let her in and see what was wrong, and, unfortunately, one of those was significantly less effort than the others.
So he had let her in.
Let, of course, being a relative term.
He had opened the door and more or less tossed her at a chair, then dumped his stupid quilt on top of her and told her to shut up before he shut her up.
No, it wasn't nice. If she had wanted someone to be nice, she would have gone to Rags or the Crybaby. Instead, she came to him. And then she told him she liked his room, and she didn't even sound sarcastic or teasing, which forced him to believe that, on some level, Pomni was girly. He had told her she could have it, and she had laughed (a very quiet, very small, very sad, very broken laugh) and told him if he wanted to live his life in primary colors, he could have hers, too, at which point he had thought about living in a Pomni-themed world, and it had almost made living seem worthwhile. That kind of mindset couldn't last, however, so he had asked why she thought he would want to live at all.
He hadn't meant to.
He didn't want her to worry, because he didn't want anyone to worry, and if she became the exception to one rule, what was to say she wouldn't become the exception to more, and then he might want her to see him without his mask, and he might call her his friend, and he might be honest with her, and then she would die.
So as soon as he saw her face crumple with concern, he had slid himself onto his quilt-less bed, laid on his belly with his chin perched on his hands, smiled hugely at her, and asked her what had her caterwauling outside of his room in the wee hours of the quotidian digital cycle. (However, due to him not knowing the word "quotidian," he had said "morning.") That didn't stop the crumpling, but at least her attention was off of him and back onto crying over whatever had previously distressed her. They hadn't said anything else for the rest of the night, but he had stayed up with her in relative quiet until her crying had stopped and she slowly fell asleep, and he finally moved her to his bed because he sure wasn't going to sleep with another person present.
Well, he hadn't meant to.
But he ended up falling asleep in the same chair she'd previously inhabited, and it didn't really matter because there was no cold, and there was no joint pain from sleeping in pretzel position, and there wasn't even any need for sleep, except that if they didn't sleep they would be tired, angry, less lucid, slower, and dumber than if they did, which was exactly the same thing that happened in the real world, which, if Jax understood correctly (and with great annoyance), did mean they needed to sleep.
So, although he hadn't wanted to, he had, and he only woke up hours later to find that Pomni had snuck out at some point and had left the ugly quilt draped over him, and a small piece of paper torn from one of his notebooks with a squiggly little bit of handwriting that said: thanks :)
Well, if they ever had another adventure, he would have to kill her, just to prove that he didn't care and that she shouldn't thank him.
With a sigh, Jax had dragged himself over to his bed, gotten comfortable, and proceeded to hallucinate.
No one was going to call it peace. It wasn't peace. It was that awful moment between jumping out of an airplane and realizing that you forgot your parachute, where you're reaching for a cord that isn't there, and wondering why you hear screaming above you. It was waiting for the shoe to drop, it was a penny in the air, it was the hand holding the straw that was going to break the camel's back but is still three inches above the camel.
Purgatory, indeed.
But they'd all made their way to the common area, something like one hebdomadal cycle after the event, and they were holding silent court as they usually did: Gangle with her drawing, Ragatha with her knitting, Zooble with their magazines, Kinger clutching a pillow and hidden under his hood but out with the rest of them, Pomni just...sitting there spiraling and occasionally being nudged by Ragatha if she seemed too out of it. Jax hated court, especially now that they weren't talking and there was a tense truce between him and everyone else, so he couldn't even be mean comfortably. It was stagnancy made physical, choking the air between them.
And then their not-peace was interrupted, because... of course. It was what they should have expected, and what they would have, some time ago, considered a matter of normalcy. Today, it was like being hit by lightning on a sunny day, indoors.
"Good morning, my hebdomadary dromedaries!"
Gangle cowered, her ribbons collapsing until she was nearly flat. Zooble's expression contorted, and they kept their face turned away from Caine as though he wasn't there. Ragatha forced a smile her mother would have been proud of, which was a wonderful thing for her relationship with Caine and a terrible thing for her relationship with her own self respect. Kinger didn't move.
Pomni turned slowly, her bi-colored eyes watching him with the tense hesitation of a deer watching a mountain lion approach.
Jax closed his eyes and thought about murder. (Then he opened one eye slightly, just enough to see if Caine tried anything funny with anyone. Because it would be funny, of course, and Jax wanted to see that. Not because he was looking for an excuse to see if AI could be killed. And certainly not because he--well. Well, it was that familial instinct, wasn't it? That one that said, "I can mess with them, but no one else can." It didn't mean he cared. And really, if something funny did happen, he would laugh regardless. But. If leaning into familial instinct offered him a chance to maul Caine, he would take it. But he hated everyone here, and a little suffering as a side dish would be okay. So, he was a little mercenary... so what?)
Caine cleared his throat. Then, when no one else turned to give him their full, adoring attention, he snapped his fingers and forced them to. Once they were all seated, forcibly, facing him, he grinned at them and straightened his tie.
"Seeing as my adventures leave something wanting in your minds, Bubble and I brainstormed amazing digital ways to learn more about YOU! What we learn from these exploratory adventures will help me tailor all future experiences to your tastes, leaving you with nothing but fun, good memories, and no desire whatsoever to ever, ever leave! Now, you may have realized by now that there are no similarities between your previous nervous systems in the macroverse and your current "nervous" experiences here in the wonderful Digital Circus (that you never want to leave)! To help me better calibrate your avatars and personalize your adventures, I've designed a special treat today that will get your nonexistent spines tingling: prepare yourselves for..... THE PAIN TOLERANCE PALOOZA!"
"What? No." Zooble stared at him in consternation. "Caine, this is not the sort of thing that makes people want to stay."
"Yeah..." Gangle added. "It sounds like...literal torture?"
"Right you are, Gangle! But, as my good friend Jax likes to say, causing pain is fun!"
"This is true." Jax nodded pleasantly, before his expression fell flat. "But being hurt isn't. And these adventures are supposed to be fun for us. Not you."
"Wait, Jax-" Zooble cut in. "Could you say that middle part again? It almost sounded like self-awareness."
"Not the time, Zoobie."
Caine smiled brightly. "I don't think you understood me, my delightful dalliances. I said it's time for an adventure."
"I think I'd like to sit this one out," Pomni said, her voice barely audible.
Caine zipped over to her, slinging an arm over her shoulder. Pomni flinched, and Jax and Ragatha's gazes flicked to each other for a moment before both of them shifted toward Pomni with the intention of freeing her from the AI.
"Pompom," Caine said, his gaze flicking over to Jax for the briefest of moments, "I really want to like you, but when you say things like that, it hurts my feelings. All I've ever tried to do is make my adventures more appealing to you."
"Well, this-" She tried to extricate herself.
"This may not seem fun at first, my dear, but I promise if you just see it though, the future adventures will be ever so much better!"
"For...who?" Pomni whispered.
"You know?" Caine pushed her away so fast that she stumbled and fell to the floor. "I don't really care anymore."
Ragatha ran to Pomni's side, helping her up and positioning herself slightly between her friend and Caine.
"Well, it's been a great chat, everyone! Your feedback is, as always, briefly reviewed and then disregarded! Off you go!"
A portal opened beneath the troop, sucking them in, and leaving nothing but a glitching AI in its wake.