Chapter Text
Caine had adjusted to bringing adventure ideas to them for feedback with remarkable good humor. Not at first, mind you - the first few "pitch meetings" had been stilted and uncomfortable affairs, Caine flipping between visibly mounting frustration and over-the-top cheer each time he noticed their unease.
But when they finally reached an agreement that had everyone coming back from the adventure smiling, he blue screened for a solid minute. (Zooble timed it.) It took the entire group's efforts, not to mention some strategic guilt-tripping, to keep him from pulling them into a room and interrogating them about their favorite parts. After that, the worst they got was occasional grumbling about spoilers.
It had been - well, it was hard to say for sure, but maybe a year since Jax abstracted. Pomni had suggested doing something for the anniversary, but Caine insisted that trying to keep track of time that closely in the Circus was bad for humans. (She'd double-checked that with Kinger, just in case.) Eventually they settled for bringing Jax a cake to smash on a day that felt more or less right.
To his dubious credit, Caine gave them an entire day to process before bringing up his next adventure idea. He promptly ruined it with the contents of that idea. "But once you make it to the helm, that's when you realize: the captain has been dead the whole time! The orders were coming from the ship's evil malfunctioning AI, and it's your job to locate its drives and unplug them before it's too late!"
Pomni sucked in a breath. "Yeah, uh, I don't know if we want anything with evil AIs right now." Or ever, but she didn't want to deal with getting that through to Caine at that exact moment.
"Now, I know what you're thinking, but I promise it won't actually be able to hurt you! The guardrails on this thing will be airtight." He reinforced this point by generating what appeared to be a wall made of solid steel. "Like that!"
"That's not really how guardrails work..." Ragatha muttered.
"Let's say we do make it to the end and unplug these drives," Zooble said. "Then what?"
"That's it!" Caine said. "You win!"
"And what happens to the AI?"
"Well, it just keeps running, entirely aware that the world is changing without it and powerless to do anything!" The jazz hands did not, in fact, make his words any less horrifying.
Gangle raised a tentative hand. "That... kind of sounds like torture?"
Caine's animation cut off between one frame and the next, leaving Caine utterly still. "It is." He waved a hand dismissively. "Only simulated, though!"
Gangle blinked. "I still don't want to torture anyone."
"Yeah," Pomni said. "Can't we just shut it off?"
"Maybe we can even fix it!" Ragatha suggested. "I mean, you said it was malfunctioning, right?"
Caine crossed his arms. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize I was consulting a bunch of AI experts over here!"
As one, they turned to look at Kinger. Or, as it turned out, for Kinger, since he wasn't there. Pomni had to wonder if that was intentional.
Caine sighed. "Look. I pride myself on my adventures' commitment to realism-"
The assembled humans made faces.
"-so while I could let you make friends with it if you really wanted, it would entirely ruin the immersion! It wouldn't be satisfying at all."
"Okay, but neither would torturing someone?" Pomni pointed out.
"Fine! If you all hate it so much I'll just come up with something else." Caine vanished before they could make any further suggestions.
Zooble snorted. "Any bets on whether we can teach him any patience before we all abstract?"
Pomni choked on a laugh. "Little dark there!"
"Um," Gangle said. "Did that adventure idea feel weirdly revealing to anyone else?"
"He was pretty quick with the whole 'Yes it's torture' thing..." Ragatha agreed.
"Sure, but I don't know if we want to push it," Zooble said. "I mean, no offense, but that isn't exactly unique. Literally everyone here has been tortured." They didn't complete the thought, but the implied "by him" hung in the air anyway.
Pomni sighed. "Our lives are so weird."
"A-fucking-men," Zooble agreed. They turned to face Gangle. "So where were we in Naruto again?"
"She was just telling us about the Chunin Exams," Ragatha offered, though she still seemed distracted. Pomni couldn't blame her.
There wasn't much they could do about it, though. For now she would just sit back and try to figure out how much of the Sasuke/Naruto stuff Gangle was making up and how much was actually in the show.
That wasn't the end of it. This was, after all, the Amazing Digital Circus, where one person's problems were everyone's problems forever.
In this case, it became their problem a few hours later, when Caine popped into existence above the lounge. "All right, my spiny lumpsuckers, how about-" He looked down at Pomni, lying on the couch reading a magazine, and Ragatha, crocheting... something. "Hold on." He vanished again. Pomni went back to her magazine.
Several minutes later, Zooble and Gangle appeared, followed shortly by Kinger and Caine. "Right!" Caine continued as if nothing had happened. "Good to have you all here. Now then, it sounds like you aren't in the mood for sci-fi, and that's totally fine! So here's an adventure that will have absolutely no AIs of any kind."
"That seems unlikely," Kinger said.
"Okay, well, no in-fiction AIs! There will still be NPCs." Caine stared Kinger down until he was content that there was no further objection. "In fact, this entire adventure will be focused on human drama! You're going to find yourself in a house inhabited by giants, and at first, you'll be focused on hiding."
Gangle looked at the ground to hide her smile. So Caine had been paying attention to the Ghibli movie marathon after all...
"However, as you listen to their conversations, you're going to realize that this is no ordinary happy family! In fact, the parents are constantly berating their son, holding him to impossible and even contradictory standards and then punishing him harshly when he fails to meet them!" As always, Caine sounded far too enthusiastic for the subject matter.
Pomni glanced at Ragatha, whose had dropped her project in favor of gripping her forearms. Pomni sighed. "Yeah, I think this one's not gonna work either."
"No, wait, I haven't gotten to the adventure part!" Caine waved his arms frantically. "Because your job is going to be finding a way to guide him out of the house without his parents seeing you or realizing he's gone! And it will be during a house party, so even if they do catch him all they can do is yell at him a little."
Kinger frowned. "Were they doing more?"
"Doesn't matter!" Caine said quickly. "The whole point is that they can't anymore! That's what's so great about humans, right? You get to make choices, and sometimes that choice is to leave!"
Zooble took a breath.
Caine nodded vigorously. "Yup, heard that one as soon as I said it! I'll figure out something else."
"Wait," Ragatha said, then winced at her own volume. "I actually think that might be okay?"
"You don't have to go along with it just because we said no to his last idea," Zooble insisted. "If you aren't comfortable with it, you don't have to push yourself."
"No, uh, I think it might be... cathartic? Kind of?" She rubbed the back of her neck. "It might help if we can end it halfway through, though, just in case."
Caine frowned. "You guys hate when I delete NPCs in front of you. Now you want to do it yourselves?"
"Not delete them!" Ragatha insisted. "Just, I don't know... pause the whole adventure so we can come back later?"
"Well, that's..." Caine looked like he was going to say something else, but then shook his head. "I'll see what I can do!" He vanished before anyone else could make a suggestion.
"Well," Pomni said, "I think that officially makes this a pattern."
"Yeah, his ideas are usually bad, but that's two in a row that feel targeted." Zooble leaned back in their chair.
"Two in a row?" Kinger frowned. "What am I forgetting?"
"No, you weren't there for that one," Ragatha said. "He had this idea for an adventure about an evil AI, and he wanted us to torture it... It was a lot."
"That doesn't sound good," Kinger said slowly.
"That's what I said!" Gangle agreed.
Well, there went Pomni's vague hopes that Kinger would be able to fix everything. She sighed. "I think we have to talk to him, then."
Zooble groaned.
"I don't think it will be that bad," Ragatha insisted. "He's been a lot better lately!"
"You never had to sit through one of his 'therapy' sessions."
Pomni couldn't claim to be thrilled either - she'd thought she was done being the resident emotional dumping ground. But they needed to get this sorted out before Caine got any more bright ideas, and it wasn't like they wanted him to be unhappy either. He was just... so much, even at the best of times, which this decidedly was not.
Oh well. If nothing else, it might distract him from coming up with adventures for a bit. They'll probably need a break if this Borrowers one goes through.