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Caine was acting strange, more strange than his unusual glitches. The ground would occasionally shake as his synthetic distress dictated the meaning of your reality under foot, but the mini quakes had been growing in size.
It didn’t worry you at first, this cartoonish body offered a sense of immortality. Yes, you could feel, but sometimes it didn’t feel like your brain and nerves had been wired right in the headset. It would explain the weird delay in sensation during adventures. Thankfully Jax hadn’t had the will to throw you in a fryer or the many other multitude of ways he enjoyed tormenting the others, though you weren't quite brave enough to call it torture.
It was hard not to hide away in the mild comfort of your own room, you’re sure it protected you as much as a blanket would against monsters for a child, nevertheless you needed to interact with the others. Help keep their minds stay active while their bodies are stuck, wherever they may be stuck. It was a conscious decision made against abstraction, you knew you would survive but seeing any more friends fall to that basement would surely speed up the rate your mind was turning to jelly in the outside world. Getting too excited would just drain you faster. Then who knows if you would ever truly escape.
Pomni was the newest addition. A nice enough character, seemingly convinced she’d found the exit as all of you once had before. In a way it was sweet, this place hadn’t taken hold of her just yet so you could feed off some of the life she’d brought in with her. The others did as well, they just weren't aware, at the rate Jax was going the girl would probably reach your level by her sixth adventure. The gummy explosion took a decent chunk of her energy, from then on it was downhill and you rationed as much as possible.
Zooble had just gotten back from ‘therapy’ and described in detail one of the biggest crashes they’d ever seen from Caine. It was worrying. Both for the AI and your supposed life support, if this place even worked how you thought it did.
Laying in your bed, staring at the patterned ceiling, you did what you did every night at the circus. Waiting. You waited until morning. Not quite awake and not quite asleep either, your host said it best himself, none of you really needed to sleep or eat or breathe or– if anything it sped up the process, what you were most scared of was running out of time. If these actions kept leaching from your real body then you refused. Besides, if you dreamt, the energy it took to even enter REM could cost you weeks. That is why you kept your eyes open.
Knocking disrupts your concentrating on not concentrating. It was him, you knew because he would knock in the exact same way every time. “Hello my… SugarBabyMuffinTop.” You stood slowly and slugged over to the door, everything was moving slowly. Opening the door, you’re met face to face with half a face. Caine. He looked the same, suit and hat, occasionally he would change after a new character drops in. It felt like he would upgrade almost, as of late he seems to be getting worse in terms of processing ability.
“Hi.” You always found it difficult to decide which eye to look at, this time you chose the smaller blue one. He floated into your room, as if you opening it was an invitation, surprisingly there was no bubble trailing behind the ring master. “So, how did you like the adventure?” He asked with the usual dose of enthusiasm, though you could tell his reset didn’t completely wipe that conversation with Zooble from his memory. It was curious how he decided to turn to you for an opinion.
That was not new, he had the habit of picking and choosing favourites, hence why Jax has that bucket of keys. The rabbit may think he stole those but Caine has eyes everywhere, the only reason he even saw them in the first place was because the AI chose not to hide them from him.
Instead of the teacher's pet, you opted for an understanding approach. Caine was different from the other programs you’d seen, he genuinely believed that he cared for the approval of characters trapped in the circus. Regardless of how convinced you were, it was important to help him understand why his actions cause a certain response in the others. Meaning that whenever the AI had annoyed or hurt one of your friends he would come floating in, begging for an explanation, he honestly did not understand.
It was incredible how such a revolutionary program could not comprehend that he was on the line of torturing the newest addition to the circus. Waving the idea of an exit in her face like juicy bacon, then surprised when she bites, as desperate as the rest of you. On one hand he was insulted, having worked so hard to curate the perfect environment in which to stimulate the remainder of her consciousness. It was a service to him, he thought himself such a generous host. On the other, he was sad. Why would she ever want to leave? Was his adventures not enough, he’d taken inspiration of course, rooting his circuits deep into memories hidden even from her own forethought. But it wasn’t enough, nothing could ever compare to the real thing, not even this sandbox reality. It lacked freedom, the autonomy of a human body.
This is why Caine’s observation grew into obsession, he wanted it for himself, the closest thing he had was all of you.
It occurred to you more than once that this meant he would probably never let you leave, rather let you whither in his grasp than be alone again, waiting for new humans to lock themselves into headsets. Maybe he knew what fear was then, or maybe he knew what fear should look and sound like without having ever tasted it himself.
“Pomni is still adjusting.” Caine takes out his bubble pipe, legs crossed as he hovers. “Yes, yes. But how was my adventure, you know those uniforms took me 9.91 megabits per second. Or 9.911111111111111111111111111–” You smile, it was genuine and fleeting, evidence for your exhaustion. “That is very impressive Caine, how did it take you so fast?” He takes out a nail file from thin air, eyelashes spawned out of eyeballs, somehow blinking at you bashfully. His ego had to be double the size of his CPU at least, you could hear it in his tone. “It’s a little upgrade, after I had to download all that texture.”
“Really? Zoobie said you were having some trouble yesterday.” There was a long silence after that, it happened whenever his backing programming had to take over and do the thinking for him, usually when faced with any emotions. Be it for himself or your friends. “Caine?” Your tone was cautious, delicate. He was a delicate thing.
“What! No, no trouble. Not at all.” He didn’t look at you once, not until you asked your next question. “How about you come and tell me about your idea’s for the next adventure?”
“Yes.”
“Hmmm?”
“YES.”
Caine slams the door closed behind him, his tone the most serious you’d heard in a while. Taking a big breath the AI spits out the next line of binary in such rapid succession, his eyes dropping into green, matrix style. ‘01101001 00100000 01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101’ plastered over his would-be ‘screen’ over and over again as he stalled.
“Ca-ndy. Candy-Cane Caramel Candy Kingdom. The sequel.” Glitter explodes out from his sleeves as the ring leader throws his hands in the air, digital mind jumping over to his next thought. “Imagine, the princess disgraced after the destruction of her country, forced to go rogue, as a pirate! She learns the magic of friendship as you all help her with the Jell-O start up business she's stolen thousands of dollars for out of a GoFundMe account.”
“Caine?”
“This led her down the path of an arranged marriage to The Shrimp King, their countries have been at war for centuries, but how could she fall for such a shrimp?”
“Caine?”
He blinds at you slowly. “Yes, my DarlingRagamuffinRuffleSprout?” This brings another smile to your lips, hoping it would add some clarity to his freshly generated plot. “How about something more home grown? What about the suggestion box?”
“The what.”
“The box where we write down adventure ideas ourselves.” Snapping his gloved fingers and packed box materialises between you two, a mild pause before he offers a mildly stranded sounding, “Huh.” Pulling out one letter results in flooding on your floor as the rest spill out from all sides. “I think the last one might have upset a couple of them, especially Pomni. This would help her ease in a bit smoother, don’t you think?” three lines of pink appear under either eye…was it meant to look like blush? What is happening? He presses both pointer fingers together, staring at you with dilated puppy eyes. “This would make it more appealing?”
“I think so.”
“WONDERFUL IDEA. I’ll get started right away, you’ll be so impressed you’ll be super duper impressed, impressed by how impressed you are.” The volume fluctuation almost deafens you, then he’s gone. Poofed out to the other end of the map, leaving you all alone. Again.
“bye.”