Chapter Text
Being the new kid in town was always tough, but I think I was experiencing a low point this time. My mind was still barely wrapping around the fact that I had been ripped away from everything I had known and loved, and shoved into this…this bizarre fever dream of a reality. This digital circus. I still had moments where I thought if I pulled up my hand, I’d see my own skin, my own body. I was met with a sickening sense of unreality every time, like I was in that state of dreaming where you’re like to jump awake at any sound. My life was different now, unnervingly different, and I still had to shake my old life out of my eyes when I woke up in the morning, to the farce of a bedroom that was now my sleeping quarters.
It looked as absurd as I did; bright red blue and yellow swatches of paint swirling in the mass of a clear basic body that served to hold me together. I looked like one of those squishy slime toys, and I lost all semblance of what it meant to be human when I stared into my hand, a clear soft coated gel shape that began swirling with my blue paint, expressing itself in shocks of little fireworks in my wrist and into my fingers. My room was as violent on the eyes as I was, dramatic cartoon paint splotches cast on the wall like I had painted so jubilantly when I was a toddler. The memory still sat in my subconscious, fuzzy and without detail, but there. So tantalizingly close to perfect vision, but every time I thought I got close to remembering the faces and names of the people in my memory, they would slip away only faster.
I clutched my bedsheets, and took a deep breath. They would be out there by now, my new…friends? Neighbors? They had been welcoming enough, but I had gotten the feeling that my unease with our situation was causing some stress for them; every time I discussed how I was feeling, they got really weird and barely expounded on their thoughts about it.
They had been here for forever, they said. But what did that really mean? How long was forever? Was this some eternal existence you only escaped through the horrifying ordeal of abstraction? Did abstraction even kill you, or did it just…corrupt your soul, forever? My eyes spun with a deep purple, and I shook the paint from my head. If I was going to make friends with these folks, I needed to try to get over my hangups and learn to exist like they did. With a seeming nonchalance and general bitchiness. I could keep it lowkey. For sure.
A yellow flower sprouted behind my eyes, and I poked at my head, “Don’t you dare.”
It was an embarrassing tell, my paint. It hadn’t taken me long to notice, it made designs and painted my body according to my emotions. Meaning that I had been an open book from the moment I got here. I had been a bright orange for almost the entire first day, a color I now knew meant fear. It hadn’t taken Jax long at all to figure it out, he’d noticed that flash of yellow in my cheeks before I could even figure out that it meant embarrassment. He had been chill, at first, but by the third day he’d taken to bullying me. He liked to poke me and send my paint jittering all around, it reacted like nervous butterflies at his approach, and I could tell that he loved that I was nervous.
What an unfortunate weakness of mine.
It had made me close with Gangle, though, another person who wore her heart on her shoulder. Her, me and Zooble had hung out late into the evening last night, and that was mainly the reason I wanted to brave going out there, despite the chance that Jax could be lurking. I got up from my bed, and walked through my door and down the stairs into the main lobby. I saw Gangle immediately, posted up on the table, colored pencils to paper already. Zooble was laying on the couch, lounging and talking to her, and I also saw Pomni sitting close by. I walked in close, and Gangle gave me a wave, “Hey Artie!”
“Morning,” I said with a small smile, and I approached and sat when Pomni politely gestured to share the couch. It was nice, the morning light was shining through the industrial sunroofs, and the vibe was casual and relaxed, almost like a chill Sunday morning.
“If this is all digital, why do things break down?” Zooble asked, continuing their previous conversation. Ah, they were probably talking about the chairs in the dining table, three of them had started glitching out weirdly, and when I had reached out to touch them last night, it had buzzed me.
“Maybe Caine forgets to update things?” Pomni asked.
“But why? He’s a computer, he should know that automatically.”
I hesitated, and Pomni urged me, “Yeah?”
“I think…maybe Caine just gets too distracted with other things taking up his cpu. I wonder if he has an internal schedule to help with that.”
Zooble considered, “I guess even my old desktop had to be reminded to update.”
“Right?” I agreed, “Exactly. I’m sure he already has some sort of alert system, but let’s bring it up just in case.”
“Eh,” Zooble sounded noncommittal, “You can do that, if you want. He doesn’t really listen to us, so it won’t matter. He’ll fix it or he won’t, but it’ll be on his whim.”
Hmm. I guess that sounded right, Caine had been unpredictable so far, one minute he was ranting and raving at a million miles an hour, another he seemed a little jaded, sending lightly biting remarks about their performance. He seemed to respond really negatively when they didn’t like his adventures. I thought the adventures had been…okay so far. The concept of adventures was definitely fun, but having no choice made it feel like schoolwork or a brutal deskjob 9-5. It dragged on and on and on and even though the stories were normally very good, most of the time I didn’t feel like being there, thus ruining the entire experience. I didn’t feel good. About the circus, about my body, about any of it, I definitely didn’t want to waste my time going on wild goose chases for literally nothing rewards.
But all that being said, I could tell that Caine wasn’t overly malicious. He was in full control, he conducted the circus like a perfect (if not weirdly dissonant) orchestra, and though he was invasive and expected our full submission, I figured he didn’t want to harm us. Caine was an ai that seemed…affectionate. He liked us, and more than anything, seemed to crave our validation. It had taken a single sentence. I hadn’t even particularly liked the adventure, but when I saw him begging for approval to the pissed off group after we’d gone through the end portal last adventure, I couldn’t help but feel the need to give him a sympathy compliment. I thought about one of the things I had liked.
“I really liked your color palette for the outdoors sequence,” I had told him, “Bright blue, seafoam green, realistic to a lagoon, but also kinda cutesy. I wish we had more time there.”
“Don’t ask for more time!” Jax had spat at me, but Caine had taken the compliment to heart already. It had sent Caine into a frenzy, and he had given us the day off today, intending to plan a whole new adventure for tomorrow. Jax had threatened me, that if it was a bad adventure he would hold me personally responsible, but I couldn’t help but feel gratified that Caine had respected my opinion to that degree. Whatever he came up with would be at least a semi-fun distraction from the settling acceptance that this was going to be the rest of my eternal life. I zoned back into the moment, realizing I had spaced.
“You good Artie?” Pomni was asking.
“Yeah,” I laughed, “Sorry, I got lost in thought. Have you guys thought about what you wanna do with your time off?”
“I’ll probably be in my room,” Zooble confessed, “I rarely get uninterrupted time off.”
I nodded, that sounded like something I might be down for too, to be honest. Pomni shuffled, “I mean, I actually found something interesting the other day, do you wanna see?”
I cocked my head, green paint swatching in my vision, “Yeah! Yeah? What is it?”
She chuckled, “Nothing insidious, I found this old record player thing. I played one of the records already. It’s weird, but it’s cool.”
That sounded up my alley indeed, I nodded furiously, “I need to see this.”
“Me too!” said Gangle, and Zooble got up from their laying position, “Okay fine, I wanna see that too.”
We moved as a group to Pomni’s room, loitering outside of it as she pulled out a massive antique gramophone, the wood beautifully scratched like a well-loved piece of furniture. She plunked it down onto the floor, and carefully pulled out a large disc. It slotted a little too perfectly, and began to play. It was a soft jazzy thing, the song swayed in the room like a light waltz, and it had Caine’s special ai touch, those highs and lows that just felt a little offcentered, a subtle mark of unhumanity that lingered like an aftertaste. It was still beautiful though. I was delighted to see Gangle twirling her ribbons around Zooble’s arms, the two of them swirling in an impromptu dance, Gangle laughing deliriously. Pomni blushed to watch it, stepping aside and grinning. I swayed myself, enjoying the music.
“What’s with the racket?” Came an unenthused voice, and Jax came out of his bedroom, fur ruffled with frustration.
“Sorry Jax, I wanted to show them what we found in that storage room.”
“Oh that?” he grinned, slinking up beside Pomni like a wave of water, “Cool that it works. I figured there was no way Caine actually wrote music for a stupid prop.”
I would have begged to differ, but I didn’t speak up. Most of Caine’s work was hyper detailed with obvious hours of work put into them. He cared enough to scratch the furniture. He cared enough to add the lilt of a waltz. Horns. Piano. Even a harp in the background. To a record that we might never have touched, to be seen rather than heard. Maybe it was just that I was an artistic soul, but I could feel the passion he put into it, maybe not a human passion, but a passion nonetheless.
It was coping, I knew. It was how they coped with feeling trapped here. They had turned bitter, and angry at their circumstances. And I still wasn’t sure if I blamed Caine for trapping me here or not, but I certainly didn’t hate him. And I didn’t dislike him enough to not notice the art he created.
The song ended, the record crackling to a stop, and Pomni switched it out for the next. A much more bluesy jazz this time, it was low and slow and made me want to smoke a cigarette in a fancy outfit at a lounge. Still almost perfect, still slightly off, he really did try his hardest on these things. But if he cared so much about us, why did he never give us our own autonomy? Why did he not understand why we might want to skip his stories, why we might want some space.
If he was telling the truth, and he was just as trapped here as we were, why did he force us to entertain his adventures, and didn’t just spend time with us? Surely getting to know us personally would yield benefits if he was trying to make us happy, it would give his ai more to work with. I felt hopeful, wondering if Caine would ever consider it. He worked hard, always in his office when he wasn’t bothering us, and honestly even pinning him down for a short conversation was hard enough. Maybe he truly didn’t want to get to know us. The thought stung just a little bit, but I let it go before letting it settle. Things were weird here, and it was bound to change at any point. I was being reckless if I let my guard down at all, nothing made sense and nothing meant anything anymore. Jax could be mean to me. Caine could not care. And ultimately all I would ever have was myself, my own consciousness, who I was despite this ridiculous form I was forced to take. I could be confident that I was still me. And for now that was all I needed to worry about.
The song ended, and I snapped out of my thoughts, my face swimming with red blue and pink.
“Wow Artie, you feelin’ expressive?” Jax drawled, ever eager to draw attention to me. I blanched, “Uh, just lost in thought again.”
“What are you thinking about?” asked Gangle, breathing slightly after her swirling dance with Zooble.
“Um…” I hesitated, “I’m thinking that I wish I could have a cup of coffee.”
Zooble answered, “We have the cafe upstairs, I think they have coffee there.”
I blinked, “Really? Does it…taste?”
“It tastes great,” Pomni nodded, “I could go for some too, how about you, Jax?”
“I’m good,” he laughed, “Sounds like a snoozefest.”
He walked back into his room, and Pomni flinched a bit. I blinked, but held my tongue.
“This way,” Zooble directed, and we helped Pomni put the gramophone back into her room, and then followed Zooble up to the cafe. There was indeed coffee here. Coffee and treats, sandwiches, lemonade. How had I not been told about this place? I sipped the coffee and melted into my seat, my entire body turning pink.
Gangle laughed, “Look, Artie’s pink!”
“You must really love coffee,” laughed Pomni, and I turned an even darker pink, “I do. Almost more than my paintbrushes.”
Gangle smiled, “I miss my favorite pen. It was an 11mm twisting ballpoint.”
“Oh my gosh, and all my stationary,” I despaired suddenly, swamping with blue, and the mood dulled quite a bit, “Ugh, sorry.”
Pomni put a hand on my shoulder, “It’s okay. I get it. You’ll go through lots of little losses as you remember what you miss.”
Surprisingly poignant. She really did understand what this felt like, they probably all did. They moved on, picking it back up when Zooble asked Gangle about her other favorite drawing tools. These people were good at keeping the mood light, I felt truly indulgent as I consumed cake and fruit and another coffee before finally feeling satiated emotionally. Because no matter how much I ate, I would never feel actually full.
After our lazy morning, we all dispersed to do our own thing. Zooble and Gangle skulked off into Zooble’s room, and Pomni went looking for Jax. I meandered down the hallway, but hesitated to go back to my room. It still didn’t feel like…home yet. And I was sure to swarm deeper into my existential nightmares. There was plenty in the circus to explore still, so why waste time feeling sorry for myself? With a heavy sigh, I walked back out into the lobby, facing an empty expanse of living area. The space was too massive to be homey, but there was something fun about it, it felt like a playground of sorts. Well, I guess that made sense.
I meandered, peeking in different doors, exploring areas I hadn’t seen. Eventually I stumbled into a room that made me pause. Easels were set up, in little spots throughout the room, the walls speckled in rainbow paint, the floors a clean stone white. It looked like…it was made for me.
“Whoops!” Came a voice I wasn’t expecting, “Spoilers!”
I felt reality shift as I was moved; in a matter of a blink I teleported back into the center of the lobby, facing the floating form of Caine.
“So sorry!” he said, “I don’t know how it slipped down here, this should still be in my workspace.”
“Is that the adventure you’re working on?” I gleamed, staring up at the dramatic host of the circus.
“Well, yes! I appreciated what you said about my color schemes, and I thought we could have an adventure with a focus on that!”
It was personal, very obviously themed around me. I silently cursed to see a flash of pink in my face.
“I appreciate that,” I said, “I don’t know what you have planned but…can I make a suggestion?”
He listened to me, as I described the perfect paintbrushes for the best art making. And I even suggested that he make an 11mm twisting ballpoint pen for us.
“And when we do this adventure,” I finished, “Can…Can you do it with us?”
“Me?” he asked, tone suggesting a genuine surprise, “I don’t know about that.”
I shrugged, “That’s okay. I just thought it might be fun to paint with you.”
His eyes bugged, “Well golly gee! I won’t refuse that! Maybe not…around the rest of the team though?”
“Oh!” I startled, realizing what he meant, “Are you…do you wanna paint right now?”
“We could beta test the adventure!” he affirmed, hands confidently on his hips, and I grinned, “I’d be honored.”
He almost snapped to blink us back in, but I put a hand out, stopping him, and simply walked back to the door, unwilling to feel the nauseating whoosh of forced movement again. He followed behind me, floating just a bit off the ground, seeming to watch me as I entered. I took in the space deeper, uninterrupted this time. It was striking, and looked absolutely filled to the brim with art supplies. I rummaged through the drawers, giggling a bit. Green and yellow swirled in branching fingers across my face as I took it all in, and turned back to the host.
“It’s incredible, you have so much! We could all do mixed media.”
He fidgeted, he surely had his own idea of what we should do, so I backed down, “I mean, maybe after our adventure, of course.”
But the words didn’t seem to comfort him, he glanced around the room, deep in thought, “Would you prefer something less exciting? I was going to-”
“Tell me,” I invited, and moved to one of the easel chairs. I grabbed a canvas from the stockpile and prepped my utensils as he told me the story of his adventure.
We would start in art class, with a wacky professor who would make very funny jokes about art and history being important degrees. We would begin drawing, and then suddenly! A blob monster comes out of the sink, and drains the color out of all of the paintings and even us. We chase him into a world of paint, and go through various art pieces to recover the color for ourselves and the beautiful painted world we lived in.
It was cute. Still not as fun as just painting was. I indulged him as he went on and on, describing the minute details, the little story beats. He was so proud of the idea of jumping from painting to painting, and I nodded encouragingly when he asked if it was a good idea. The entire time he talked, I painted. And by the end of it, I had finished a roughly painted portrait of Caine himself. I turned the canvas around eventually, and gave him a smile.
“Looking sharp,” I grinned, and one of his hands went to a canine, “Am I?”
I snickered, “I mean you’re looking good. Looking handsome.”
He seemed a bit dazed, and blushed a bit as he glanced at my painting, “Wow, what an incredible artwork you created!”
“You want it?”
He hesitated, “Is…that okay?”
“I would love for you to have it,” I promised, and passed the canvas over. One good thing about living in a digital world is that you didn’t have to wait for paint to dry; Caine grabbed the canvas and held it at his side as he turned to me again.
“Do you think the others will like the adventure?”
I paused, choosing my words carefully, “Uh…some of them definitely will.”
He nodded, “I appreciate the honesty. Is there any way I can update it so that Zooble will enjoy it more?”
Zooble actually wasn’t who I was worried about. I paused, “Maybe giving us the option to paint or go on the adventure would help. I’ll do the adventure, and others can join if they want, but anybody who doesn’t want to can paint instead.”
He seemed not quite satisfied, but he let the matter be, “I appreciate your time Artie, you truly were the perfect human to give advice on this.”
I grinned, “Of course. Any time.”
He snapped then, and I was transported back to my own room. I closed my eyes to bypass the nausea, my paint making sick twirls in my body as if I’d been shaken like a snow globe.
Well, that went okay I think. He seemed to be genuinely happy for the painting, and maybe he’d actually consider my advice. I ended up taking a nap, and then later in the day I snuck back to the cafe and had another coffee, the flavor of the creamy sweet drink giving me untold amounts of dopamine. Nobody was really out and about the rest of the day, choosing to rest after an onslaught of adventures this week. I heard Jax and Pomni meandering the lobby, making jokes together as I came back downstairs, but I shuffled into my room instead of going out to meet them. I wasn’t sure what all was going on between all the people here. Sometimes they acted like they hated each others’ guts, and other days they got along swimmingly. I supposed that could happen, being forced into proximity with basically strangers. Maybe I would feel that way too, eventually.
I sunk into my bed, grateful that I still felt cozy under the covers. I didn’t feel things in quite as much detail as what I remembered about my life before. It was like I’d had several layers of my sensation peeled away; but under the warm covers, I still felt a shiver of satisfaction as I stretched out my body, and lazily slept. In the morning, I blinked my eyes open and took a deep breath. I didn’t wake up expecting my human body this time. I still felt a bit heavy as I adjusted to being awake, the sinking feeling of being totally trapped starting to take root in my heart.
But I would push on anyways. Today was the adventure made for me, I had to do my best to be thankful. I left my room, and sulked to the lobby, where a few characters were already gathering, waiting for the adventure to start. Kinger was there, and Ragatha too, both people that I had seen very little of. Kinger stayed in his fort most of the time, and Ragatha was nice but she tended to self isolate, and I hadn’t exactly been seeking anyone out. I came and sat next to her on the open spot of the couch, and she gave a smile.
“Morning Artie,” she grinned, “How are you?”
“Great,” Jax answered for me, “Today’s all about her, remember?”
I shot him a look, and Ragatha continued, “Oh that’s right! Caine was making it personalized, right?”
“It’s a paint theme,” I explained, “I got to see a sneak peek. The adventure looks like most of his others, but there’s a big art class room that has so many supplies, it’s incredible.”
That piqued Gangle’s interest, she glanced over to Zooble, and the two of them seemed pleasantly surprised by the theme.
“Doesn’t matter,” Jax complained, “We’ll get to do what we want for two minutes and then he’ll make us save a princess or lead a revolution or become mimes.”
It was a fair point, and I didn’t answer. I had no idea whether Caine would incorporate my idea or not, he’d seemed distracted. I guess we were about to find out.
