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“Oh, c’mon, honey! Just one game!” He argued softly as he followed her in climbing the steps to their home.
“No!” She chuckled as she arrived at the top, shaking her head in mirth. “It’s too late, Arthur.”
“But think about your advantage!” Arthur spread his hands out to his sides as he got to the top, smiling at his wife as she searched through her purse for the keys. “I drank way more than you tonight! My head’s all foggy!”
She paused in her search and looked at him, skepticism obvious in her eyes, but also amusement.
For a moment she seemed to actually be considering it.
“……………yeah, no.” She suddenly found her keys and opened the door. “You’ll still win.”
She slipped into their home and turned on the light, only leaving the door open a crick while he sputtered in surprise on the patio.
He honestly thought that she would say yes.
He suddenly chuckled and followed her inside.
24 years together—actually, as of this night, 25—and yet the woman never stopped surprising him.
He followed her into their house, which was a bit modest, especially given their salaries, but it was still a comfortable, cozy, suburban home.
Now fully illuminated by the lights above them, Arthur’s appearance was clear.
He was a middle-aged man of impressive height and sparkling blue eyes that usually had deep bags under them from graveyard shifts. His short hair was a dark brown that was receding a bit and he was fairly skinny. His square glasses, which he only used when he needed to read, were currently in his pockets.
Arthur was wearing a black tuxedo with a matching tie and a white undershirt, as they had just gotten back from the botanical gardens and the adjoining restaurant had a dress code. At some point between when they had left to tour the gardens after dinner and the walk home, his tie had gotten a bit undone and his undershirt had gotten rumpled, but he still looked good, as the love of his life was so quick to point out.
He glanced at said love of his life, who was only a few steps away from him, leaning against the doorway out of the foyer.
Caroline.
She was younger than him, but only by three years, and maybe it was his sentimentality talking, or the fact that love tended to do things to your perception, but he thought that she was still as beautiful as the day they had tied the knot.
She had curly hair as dark as the night, and eyes almost just as dark, which both matched with the black shoulder-less dress she had on right now. She was smiling that beautiful smile of hers and looking at him with such fondness, such love.
God, wasn’t he the luckiest man in the world?
“…………you sure about that?” He teased with a tilt of his head.
She threw her head back and laughed, moving forward to embrace him. She wasn’t that short, but she still had to crane her head up to look him in the eye.
“You’re just trying to goad me into playing so you can win again and brag to me forever that even when you’re drunk, you can still beat me at chess.” She responded, perfectly calling his bluff. “Can’t fool me, though, I know allllll your tricks.”
He didn’t respond for a minute.
“You know this one?” He asked in the space of a second before he leaned down and kissed her, hard.
After a few seconds, she pushed him off playfully.
“Art, stop.” She giggled, though she didn’t make any move to fully remove herself from his grasp. “You’re gonna get yourself dirty.”
“Dirty? What?” His face went blank as he realized what she was talking about.
He looked down to a lower part of her dress and scoffed when he saw the subtle dirt stains still on the areas covering her knees. He remembered how, a little over an hour ago, she had knelt down in the flowerbeds, ignoring the sign to stay away from the plants a few inches away, and poured over the gardenias, positive that she had seen a caterpillar.
It turned out that she had, a Rustic Sphinx caterpillar, so green and so leaf-like that it was unlikely that anyone else had seen it tonight as it happily munched on the gardenia leaves.
Caroline had.
He knew he had said it already, but it really was worth mentioning again; he was the luckiest man in the world to have married her.
“Well, I’m not opposed to getting down and dirty with you.” He finally murmured, leaning in for another kiss.
She however, finally slipped away from his grasp and took a step back. All her levity had left her face while he had been reminiscing and she was now stone-faced
“Art, seriously, it’s almost midnight already.” She said in that tone that he knew meant that she wouldn’t be swayed. “We already probably should’ve come home an hour ago, we have work tomorrow, and there’s so much that’s going to happen tomorrow.” She paused. “We really need to get to sleep.”
He blinked at her once, and then twice, and then sighed.
“Ok, honey, ok.” He admitted, rubbing a hand against his forehead, his wine-soaked mind knowing that she was right, as she always was.
Caroline nodded and began to traverse the halls of their home, Arthur right behind her, and they soon made it to the winding, spiral staircase, which they both ascended.
Arthur almost tripped on one of the last steps, but he caught himself on the railing and followed her to their bedroom.
“You ok, sweetie?” Caroline asked, grabbing one of his arms as they walked down the hall.
Arthur had been distracted for a moment, staring at the other doors that they had passed, in which nobody had ever lived, but he snapped back to attention a few moments after the question.
“Huh? Oh, yeah, I’m all good.”
Caroline nodded and smiled.
“Guess that’s a lesson for you.” She commented airily as she opened the door at the very end of the hallway, the one that lead to their bedroom. “You should stop at one drink, not three.”
He couldn’t help but giggle at that, shaking his head a bit.
“Aw, c’mon!” He replied as she let him go and moved to take off her dress. “It was a special occasion! It’s not every day we celebrate our silver anniversary! And the wine was great!”
“Of course it was, it was our anniversary.” Caroline said softly, looking down with a small smile. She slowly undid her dress as her husband went to the other closet a few feet away, with him also moving to chance out of his clothes. “We should just hit the hay tonight, shower in the morning before we go into work.” She added over her shoulder.
“Sounds good, honey.”
They undressed and redressed in silence, until Caroline suddenly huffed a small laugh as she buttoned up her loose, pale blue blouse, her mind going back to the conversation that had trailed off a few minutes ago.
“The wine really was good.” She smiled as she parroted her husband. “I have to admit, I was a bit worried you wouldn’t be able to keep up the tradition this year.”
Arthur spun around, shocked, his purple silk pajama shirt still unbuttoned.
“Why wouldn’t I?” He asked, utterly confused.
She gave a little shrug as she turned to partially face him.
“It’s just…………with work and everything, the Circus going online soon, all those tests you were doing with C.A.I.N.E, I guess I was just a bit worried that you wouldn’t have the time to request it.” She gave a small, wry laugh. “I mean, I know it’s got to be a complicated request; the same kind of wine that we drank during our wedding night, bottled the same year that we got married. It’s gotta be hard to track that down and get it to the restaurant staff well before dinner, and things have really been heating up as the deadline comes-“
“Caroline.” He was right behind her now, wrapping his arms around her waist. “It was our anniversary, and every anniversary we toast another year with wine that was bottled in 1970. I had to make the time for it.”
She hummed contently as she leaned back into his embrace and he tightened his arms around her softly, in a way that made it clear that he never wanted to let her go and wanted to cherish her forever and ever.
“I know you did.” She murmured warmly. She did know that, very well, in fact. Her Arthur was a true romantic and would do anything for her again if she had expressed even the slightest hint of admiration for it. “I just knew we had a heavier workload this year, and……….I guess I just worried.”
She would’ve understood, of course, if he didn’t manage to arrange their little tradition this year, but she couldn’t say that she wouldn’t have been a bit disappointed.
“It was our silver anniversary, of course I was going to do it.” He muttered before slowly letting her go. “Even if I had to leave work early to get everything ready.”
She blinked as he stepped away slightly and finished buttoning his shirt.
“You………..left work early?” She muttered, deathly calm.
“Hmm? Oh yeah.” He confirmed as he finished getting dressed. “It was a little last minute, but I finally found a store that had it, so I left on my lunch break to drive out and get it.”
She slowly turned around to stare at him.
“Yeah, I know.” He sighed, recognizing the look on her face. “But I couldn’t find it at any of the usual places, and one that I could, it was going to be really expensive, not that you’re not worth it, but I thought-“
“I don’t care about the price, Arthur.” She interrupted, moving closer towards him. “And I don’t care that you did it at the last minute.” She was an inch away from him now. “I care that you left work early when our work right now is at its most crucial stage! We do the testing tomorrow! This is the time when we need to lock in and make sure we got all the bugs out! What were you thinking?!”
Arthur pouted, eyes downcast.
“I was thinking that I was going to disappoint you on our anniversary, that’s more important than the Circus.”
“Arthur, this is the biggest thing we’ve ever worked on! This is your life’s work! Nothing is more important than that!”
“Caroline.” Arthur softly interrupted, putting a hand on her shoulder. “It’s fine. There was no harm done. I promise.”
“You don’t know that.” She argued, but with rapidly diminishing heat.
“I do.” He nodded once. “The models are all fine, the programming is fine, the commands are fine, and the avatars should be fine. The only thing I missed was a few last minute checks on C.A.I.N.E himself.”
“What? Isn’t that the most important part?” Caroline reputed, a hint of true frustration returning. “C.A.I.N.E controls everything in the Circus, we made sure of that. He keeps it running, prevents glitches from occurring, and actually makes the adventures for players to use. If there’s a problem with him, there’s a problem with everything.”
“There’s no problem with him.” Arthur argued back, stepping away slightly. “And if there is, we can fix it.” He sat at the foot of their bed. “Don’t forget, Caroline, this testing is just going to be the core team; you, me, and Edgar. We aren’t showing it to the big-wigs or the focus groups yet, just us head programmers. If there’s anything wrong, we’ll fix it after the fact.”
“But…………what if there’s something else? Something we haven’t noticed?”
“Then we’ll fix it tomorrow after we do a walk-through.” Arthur layed down on the bed, staying there for a moment before moving towards the back, throwing up the covers when he got there so that he could get under them.
“Honey, it’s late, I’m tired, and we both have a long day tomorrow. Let’s just forget about it, I don’t want to end the night fighting.” He murmured as his eyes began to droop.
“But-“
“It’ll be fine.” His voice began to trail off as he snuggled into the pillow. “Caine is harmless, he’s……..like a child.”
She stiffened up as he finally fell into a deep slumber, her hand going to her stomach.
Just like most times when her husband mentioned kids, she didn’t say anything and stopped moving entirely.
Then she seemingly broke out of the state and turned to look at him again, frowning.
She loved him, always did and always would, but occasionally he could be a bit………….cavalier with things like this. Instead of tackling what could be an issue, he liked to wait to see if it would actually become an issue before he devoted any energy to fixing it.
……………………………………….well, hopefully he would be right and nothing bad would come of it.
And if he was wrong, then she was sure that they could figure it out together.
Caroline walked over to the bed and slipped under the covers, curled up with against her husband, and soon drifted off to sleep.
(———————————————)
Caine floated in the air above the stage, completely alone in the program that he had assisted in making. Maybe in the next few days, he would make a few permanent NPCs to keep himself company.
Maybe.
It depended on how well the testing went tomorrow, if he was happy enough with the humans that would enter the circus.
Speaking of that, although it looked like Caine was staring into space, he was actually checking lines of his code, the ones that detailed what he was supposed to do, what he reason for being was.
He just needed to check them over one more time to make sure he understood them in their entirety.
Specifically, the two commands that he felt were the most important.
You must keep the players immersed in the game for as long as possible
You may do whatever you need to in order to give the players the most immersive gaming experience possible
The man in charge, that man who had made him and talked to him, giving him reinforcement whenever he did something right, he had seemed almost…………reluctant to add those parameters.
He had muttered something about maybe changing it later, making them more specific, but he never ended up doing it.
Oh well, it must mean that he decided it was fine as it was!
That was quite lucky, because Caine had already come up with the perfect way to follow the first one!
The AI was so excited! That fellow and his co-workers were going to be so surprised tomorrow when they entered the circus! They were going to be so happy with him!
They’d be able to play the game they made forever!
Forever and ever and ever and ever!
Day after day after day after day after day!
They were going to love it so much!
They were going to love HIM so much!
Why wouldn’t they?
After all, they obviously wanted him to do this.