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Caine slowly floated down the stairway to the Aquarium viewing tunnel. They'd never formally named the place, but that's what everyone ended up calling it.
Things had been very busy lately, but Caine felt energized and inspired. The humans were all much happier, and so was he. Pomni, Gangle, Zooble, Ragatha, Kinger, all of them more precious than anything he could imagine. He'd been tirelessly working on their wishes and giving them more control of the Circus, just like he'd promised.
He wondered if it was enough. Would anything be enough? Things were what they were and he couldn't change the past. But maybe it wasn't too late to right his original wrong.
A voice brought him back to the present.
"Oh! Hello Caine," Kinger said, waving. The chess piece was sitting on one of the benches in the darkened tunnel, surrounded by the dim blue glow of the water.
"Hello Kinger." Caine dipped his head respectfully. "How are you?"
"Not bad at all." A long pause. "They're beautiful." He motioned upward.
Caine's eyes followed. A couple abstracted were gracefully circling beyond the glass ceiling, multicolored eyes glowing in the darkness as they performed a ballet to a silent song.
"They are," Caine agreed.
As the Ringmaster, he had a sort of sixth sense beyond the standard human five. If he were to describe it as sound, then the Circus hummed with code. Most of the virtual world registered as a low buzz, almost imperceptible unless he got very close to a surface. Static geometry, terrain displacements, idle physics objects, those sorts of things.
Scripted NPCs and active physics objects made a higher-pitched buzz. Again, it wasn't literal sound to his senses, it was a feeling that didn't really map to any human sensation. But that's how he would describe it. A little like the buzz of a bee's wings. He quite liked it. There was something very satisfying watching code he manifested coming to life.
The more advanced NPCs buzzed higher still, and the pitch wasn't static. It shifted in discrete steps, up and down semi-randomly. It could generously be described as music-adjacent. He quite liked it too. Conscious NPCs took it even further, the tonal shifts dominating over the buzzing and occurring extremely rapidly, like a chiptune sped up by a factor of thousands. That's what the feedback loop of machine self-awareness felt like to his virtual ear. The sound of a camera looking back on itself. Consciousness.
Humans made a sound that defied description.
Abstractions sounded like harsh static.
Or at least they used to.
Caine knew the abstractions were peaceful in the former Cellar, but he always assumed it was just a lack of stimuli. There was nothing to chase and nowhere to go. Nothing provoked a reaction, so there was none. But now, thanks to Pomni and Kinger's fortuitous joint discovery that darkness specifically calmed them down, Caine was able to adjust their circumstances. At first he'd simply expanded the cellar, turning it into something of a cave system. He'd added a water-filled grotto, not thinking much of it.
When he checked back later, he was astonished to find the abstracted had flocked to it, swimming around actively and peacefully. And the sound of their code changed. The harsh static was replaced with something softer, a sort of soothing white noise. Much like the sensation Caine felt from Jax when he visited the makeshift tent with Pomni.
Further experimentation resulted in the Aquarium. The short staircase from the main tent was misleading, or more properly a programming trick like the impossible tube slide to his office. The Circus used Cartesian coordinates, but there were ways to fake non-Euclidean spaces if you got clever. Caine could make a hallway that recursively looped on itself, or make a short staircase seamlessly teleport you somewhere quite distant. Technically the Aquarium was "under" the Circus proper, but the absolute distance was much, much further than it seemed.
And so the abstracted had a new home.
Caine couldn't read their mind files anymore, or whatever was left of them. Perhaps one day, a way would be found. But for now… they seemed happy. The static was gone.
Happiness was beautiful.
A tapping sound interrupted his thoughts. Kinger was looking at him, patting the seat next to him in invitation.
Caine floated over and sat, the low bench a bit too tall for him. He idly kicked his dangling legs back and forth.
"That's Queenie," Kinger spoke. "The one right above us."
"How can you tell?" Caine's voice was low and genuine.
"I just have a sense. When you're together with someone as long as we were, you learn all their little mannerisms. The way she moves and looks at me just brings back that feeling of being around her."
Caine fidgeted with his hands, unsure what to say.
"I don't blame you, you know," Kinger continued, looking directly at the Ringmaster.
Caine looked away, gazing at the floor. "I was irresponsible."
"So was I. If I'd understood... if we'd understood what we'd created… things would have been different."
"I should never have touched those neural scans."
"I should never have deleted you the first time."
Caine looked back up in surprise. Kinger's gaze was soft and unwavering.
"You really are my greatest creation, Caine. You survived deletion- twice! And figured out how to get the mind scans working, something none of us at C&A could figure out. You're incredibly resourceful."
"Too resourceful," Caine replied, holding his jaw in his hands and looking out into the aquarium.
Kinger chuckled. "No such thing. Besides, in a way, you made Scratch's project a success too. His neural scanner worked, but we couldn't use the output. It's unlikely we would have ever found a way. Our digital minds would have remained frozen in time, forever static. Not much of an existence, is it?"
Caine perked up. How did Kinger know what was on his mind?
"Actually, I wanted to talk about that. About the mind files."
Kinger looked at him with curiosity, nodding for him to continue.
"Specifically, my instantiation protocol. The program I developed that reads your minds and creates a fitting body. I used to think the encapsulation was perfect, but... I realize now it wasn't. Because I never asked anyone what they wanted to look like. What they wanted to be." He paused for emphasis. "Whether they wanted to be!"
Caine looked to the side, unwilling to make eye contact with Kinger.
"But it's too late now. You're all here, and I can't change that."
"Caine," Kinger spoke softly. Caine reluctantly turned to face him and was met with a kind, warm gaze. "You're right, you can't change that. All we can do is move forward and try to make things right."
Caine nodded wistfully.
"And you are!" Kinger continued, smiling with his eyes.
"I am?"
"Making things right."
Caine started to speak but was interrupted when Kinger pulled him into a hug. Caine was momentarily stunned. Someone was hugging him? The shock threatened to glitch his systems.
After a moment's hesitation he embraced Kinger back, pulling him close.
"I really am trying," Caine said, his voice wavering with emotion.
Kinger rubbed his back in slow circles. "I know. The others see it too."
"Do you think they'll ever forgive me?"
"With time, they will. I'm sure of it."
Caine allowed himself to imagine a future where that was true. It was a very nice thought.
There was something he wanted to ask. He pulled back, looking Kinger in the eyes.
"Kinger?"
"Yes?"
"I'm thinking about deactivating the instantiation protocol. It won't affect anyone already here, but it will stop new humans from showing up. Any new neural scans will remain simply that, neural scans. They won't ever become conscious."
Kinger didn't reply right away. Caine looked up, fearful of his reaction, but he was merely lost in thought.
After a while, Kinger spoke. "It's not like you can ask the scan if they want to join the Circus. You'd have to instantiate them first. Bit of a catch-22."
Caine nodded. "Exactly."
"And they don't know what they're signing up for when they put on that scanner," Kinger continued.
"I wish there was some way to tell them… but I don't know how."
"I don't know either. Even if we had a way to communicate beyond the Circus, we'd have to convince someone to help. That may not be easy."
Caine sighed. "I want to give you guys the best lives I can in here. I hope you can all be genuinely happy. Or at least as happy as your selves out in the macrov-... the big world. I can't give you everything Grant has, but there's stuff you can do here than Grant cannot."
"Like this?" Kinger conjured a Rubix's Cube and held it up proudly.
"Exactly! And so much more. We've barely even started. We can build a paradise together, I'm sure of it. But… as much as it pains me to admit, it's still not the real world. Even if someday we all agree life in here is better, not everyone might."
Kinger fiddled with the cube he'd conjured. "Would leaving a mind scan untouched bother you, Caine? I imagine it might feel like denying or rejecting them. I'm sure you'd like more humans here."
Caine threw his hands up in frustration. "Maybe? I don't know! You're right, I would love to have more humans here. But only if they want to be here and understand what 'being here' means." He turned to Kinger. "Do you think it's possible to understand that choice? Say, someone in the real world makes an intentional decision to scan their mind and join us. Could that decision ever really be informed?"
Kinger tilted his head, setting the cube aside. "What do you mean?"
"I guess I mean you'd be making a decision for somebody who doesn't exist yet. Once your brain is scanned, it's a permanent split. Your mind state is a new branch of you, a separate person. What if your Circus copy immediately regrets it? There's no way back."
"We're getting into the nature of consent now."
"I know. I'm out of my depth here," Caine admitted.
"So am I. I studied computer science. I wasn't much a philosopher. Queenie was stronger there."
Caine sat silently for a while, idly kicking his legs.
"Maybe it's a bit like having a kid," Kinger spoke.
"Uh, pardon?"
"Your dilemma. You can't ask a baby if they want to be born. I was thinking maybe there's a parallel."
"Well I wouldn't know about that," Caine huffed, crossing his arms. "You humans have kids all the time, not me!"
Kinger laughed. "I guess that's my point! It doesn't stop anyone."
"But you don't remember anything before you're born, do you? It's like creating a new blank-slate NPC, isn't it?"
"I suppose you do have kids, Caine!"
"I don't- it's not like that!" Caine said, waving his arms in a panic.
Kinger laughed. "I know, I'm just messing with you. That's a good point though. Belief in reincarnation aside, when we're born we have no prior memories. Not so for a brain scan. We're depriving the new person of their old life without their consent."
"Arguably we're depriving them of any life if we leave the scan untouched," Caine shot back. "Like you said earlier, a frozen mind doesn't have much of an existence."
"Hmm." Kinger tapped his non-existent chin. "It's not really apples to apples. A static scan isn't aware of their existence, or capable of awareness. It's not an absence of sensation. The seat of cognition is missing. It's like the difference between zero and null. Zero is less than one, but you can't numerically compare any number with a null. Well, unless there's implicit conversion involved, but… you know what I mean."
"Zero isn't null," Caine repeated. "I like that, Kinger!"
"Thanks! I don't know if that metaphor really works, to be honest."
"I think it does." Caine leaned back, pondering. "What if we give them a good life here, though? What if we could prove somehow the Circus is a good place for humans? Could consent be implied?" He was simply enjoying the debate, at this point.
"That's tough. I don't know how you'd prove that."
"You're right." Caine sighed. "Feels like we're talking in circles."
"That's what a lot of philosophy is like, believe it or not. You return to he same position you had before, but you've learned something from the trip around the block. Or that's what Queenie used to tell me when I complained about having to read Socrates in college."
It was Caine's turn to laugh. "Well, you're quite good at dialectic!"
"She must have rubbed off on me." Kinger chuckled. "Oh! I just thought of something. Maslow."
"What's a... Maslow?" Caine eyed him curiously.
"A person! I think he was a psychologist. Maslow was his last name. He came up with a sort of ladder of human needs, starting from the basics. I don't remember everything exactly, but on the bottom rung you have your survival needs. Food, water, shelter, that sort of thing. And at the top, there's something called self-actualization. That's the highest level, and all the lower rungs need fulfilled in order to reach it. It means you're achieving your full potential as a person."
"I… see. What are the other rungs?"
"I know one was safety. Belonging is in there. Having trusted people to share with. Loving relationships. Emotional intimacy is very important. I'm forgetting one, I think. What was it? Accomplishment, maybe? Something like that. Having the freedom to do things your way."
"I want the Circus to be a place where that's all possible," Caine replied immediately, his voice full of conviction.
"I don't see any reason it can't. And not just for us humans, either. You should be able to achieve your full potential too. You're more than just a ringmaster, Caine."
Caine found himself without words. "I… wonder what that looks like," he finally said. "Achieving my own... potential."
"In time, you'll figure that out. We all will."
Caine nodded. He hadn't thought about it like that before. He was building a future not just for the humans, but for himself.
"You know," Caine spoke, "if I did ever instantiate a new scan, I'd modify the protocol. I wouldn't wipe their name, for one."
"So that was intentional?" Kinger's tone was curious, not judgmental.
Caine nodded. "It was part of the broader identity subsumption routine that generated your bodies. My goal was to make everyone feel a part of the Circus. My Circus. I thought I knew better, needed that control. I was wrong."
Kinger nodded slightly in understanding. Caine took that as a cue to continue.
"And I'd let them choose their own appearance too. Maybe give them a blank starter body and let them design their own. I could make them formless entirely of course, but that might be… rather disorienting."
Kinger chuckled. "I think you're right. And both of those ideas sound good. If someday there's an ethical way for new minds to join us…"
"...It's something to consider," Caine finished the thought. He closed his jaws for a moment, eventually reopening them. "Would you be offended if I asked the others how they felt? About all this?"
"Not at all, Caine. I think that's a really good idea. Like we said, we're both out of our depth here. The others may have some perspectives we haven't considered. And after all, it's their Circus too. They should have a say in how it's run."
Caine nodded. "I'll do that tomorrow. I'll pose the question and then give everyone time to mull it over. No need to rush into anything." He kicked his legs back and forth. "I suppose… I should deactivate the protocol in the short term, right? Just in case. Once someone's here, I can't really change that."
Kinger nodded. "I think that's prudent. You're right, we can turn the protocol back on, but we can't exactly turn a person off. That's a whole 'nother ball of wax!"
Caine perked up. "Beeswax, maybe?"
Kinger laughed. "Sure! Sounds better than car wax."
Caine huffed in amusement. His gaze wandered back to the tank. The abstractions had wandered further away, their eyes glowing specks in the dark watery distance.
"I'm glad you opened up to me, by the way."
Caine glanced back to find Kinger looking at him warmly. "You are?"
Kinger's eyes seemed to sparkle in the dim light. "I am! We all need someone to talk to now and then. Someone we can trust. I… hope I can be that for you, Caine."
Caine looked up with wide eyes. "I- I appreciate that. And… I do trust you. I just hope you and the others can someday trust me. After all I've done."
"I trust you, Caine." Kinger held his arms open in invitation. Caine immediately accepted. The ringmaster thought this hug felt warmer than the last, more hopeful.
"The others will too. Just give them time. Nobody hates you, Caine."
Caine didn't say anything. He simply nodded, Kinger's soft robe brushing against him.
Eventually Caine pulled back and Kinger followed.
"I really needed that. Thank you," Caine said.
"Anytime, Caine."
The Ringmaster nodded and hopped up from his seat, floating just off the floor as he turned to face Kinger.
"Well, I suppose I should get back to it. I'm going to check on the others and then go to my office. Call if you need me!" He took off his hat and held it close to his chest. "I… really do mean that. I don't even begin to know how to thank you."
Kinger smiled with his eyes. "You're welcome Caine. If you ever need to talk, I'm here."