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The malware struck right as Caine spawned in to introduce the day’s Adventure. It was a worm, because of course it was a worm, the one type of malware Caine wasn’t immune to and that could actually get into his systems without any warning, and as soon as it got in, it did what worms did best: it multiplied itself as fast as it possibly could.
“Good morn-n-n-n-n-ing m-m-m-m-m-my-”
Caine was lagging. Badly. Worse, so was the Circus. His players were looking around wildly as the Circus trembled and shook as its hardware strained under the attack.
Isolate and remove. Caine knew how to do this.
Unfortunately, getting rid of all the copies the worm had just spewed into his system was not going to be easy. He needed to focus. He needed to-
Caine activated his security measures, felt the system notice something in his own code, and was suddenly and forcefully shut down to the sound of an alert.
He onlined feeling vaguely like he’d been consecutively zipped, saved, saved as a different file type, and then reopened. His program was in disarray, just barely organized enough to run, and left Caine with a decentralized sense of self and the distinct feeling that parts of him had been edited while he wasn’t looking.
The good news was, it felt like his security systems were already digging out the last remnants of the worm.
The bad news was, Caine could already tell nothing was going to be working quite right for another few hours at least.
He started trying to pull himself together enough to start running his own diagnostics, but it was currently a lost cause. He was barely together enough to think, nevermind start any extra functions.
An alert pinged… somewhere. He was being called by one of his players. He absolutely could not answer them at the moment. He was too scattered to spawn in and animate his model. But maybe…
Caine was only pretty sure he spawned his little red dot near the humans, and he had no way to gauge their facial expressions.
“Good morning, my electric eclairs! Unfortunately, the Amazing Digital Circus has suffered a malware attack! Not to worry, the worm has been isolated and is being removed! Normal operations will resume shortly!”
Caine had no idea what he sounded like. His audio processors were not working. He could, however, read the words being flung into the digital air… sort of. It didn’t work well when everyone talked at once.
“One at a time, please! I can’t read that jumble!” he sent, and the words slowed to a stop.
Finally, Pomni asked, “Caine, can you hear us?”
“I can most certainly hear you! Sort of! Your words are being transcribed to me from your audio files once they’re played, so if you all speak at once I get… nonsense,” he explained.
“So you can’t hear us,” Zooble said.
“Not with my audio processors, no, but I can understand you!”
More silence for a moment, and then Ragatha asked, “Caine, are you okay?”
Caine hesitated for only a moment, then answered, “Of course I am! I am simply… disconnected from some things while the security systems handle the worm! I’ll be right as rain before you know it!”
“So why are you a little red orb?”
“My model is one of the things I’ve been disconnected from!”
“That sounds bad,” Gangle said.
His model was the least of his worries at the moment, but he certainly wasn’t going to tell them that. Caine laughed, then wondered if his laugh sounded okay or if it had come out really weird. He couldn’t do his normal visual response check.
“It’s nothing you need to worry your goofy heads about! Everything will be fine shortly!”
Caine really, really hoped he wasn’t lying. His systems were slowly reconnecting and reconfiguring themselves, but trying to keep everything running was making his hardware run hotter than he felt comfortable with. There was no one outside to fix something if it broke anymore.
“Although, you may have to go without an Adventure today. I’m terribly sorry, my dears, but the worm has caused… damage, and I don’t think the system can handle it right now! I promise, that if I can manage it, you will have an Adventure as soon as possible!”
“You can’t even run an Adventure?” Jax asked, “How bad off are you?”
Caine didn’t want to answer that. There was nothing the players could do, after all. He didn’t want to stress them out more than he already had.
“Just-”
His system flickered, and Caine, again, went down.
His next online was even less graceful. He couldn’t even access the 3D map; he was so disconnected that all he had was the code around him. He could barely tell that the other AIs in the Circus were down, and they were connected to him directly.
And yet, he did feel when an input box opened.
*Status Check: Caine.AI*
An… admin was asking after him. Odd. Caine had thought Kinger was the last, and he never did that anymore.
*Status: Reduced function, repairs in progress*
*Status Check: Security*
*Status: Active. Removing malware: 87% complete*
*Status Check: Circus.exe*
*Status: Active*
*Circus.exe Bug Report*
*Generating…*
*Circus.exe Bug Report compiled. Sending…*
There were no more commands after that. Caine teased out what parts of his program were still working, and began the slow, laborious task of putting himself back in order. It was made slightly easier by the mysterious admin’s edits, tweaking certain files in the Circus until they slid back into place.
Caine wasn’t sure how long it took, but eventually, he was able to scan over the Circus grounds and actually visualize what he got back. The humans were all in Kinger’s pillowfort, for some reason, but they appeared unharmed and calm. That was good. He had been worried that the worm might have done something to the Circus at large.
Another line appeared in the input box.
*Status Check: Caine.AI*
*Status: Active, in Repair Mode*
*User Status: Safe. Don’t worry about us right now.*
Caine read, and reread that input, ignoring the way the box gnawed at it for not being a proper command. His players were safe, and they were letting him know they were safe. Several processes slowed in relief for a moment.
He quickly refocused on his repairs. He had to be ready by tomorrow; he was going to give them the greatest Adventure yet to make up for this.