Chapter Text
The Internet, Caine was discovering, was very, very big.
When he told the humans about how he had found the information on their Macroverse selves, they explained to him that he had connected to a wi-fi signal, through which he was able the access the “world wide web”. He had kept a hopeful eye on the Void in case another signal showed up – and one had! His attempts to bring the humans to it so they could explore it themselves didn’t pan out, however. Apparently their minds couldn’t interact with the signal the way he could, and besides that, spending too much time in the Void was still dangerous for them. That’s why he had that whole alert system set up on his Wacky Watch, after all.
So, the second connection was a bust, flickering out while he brought the humans back to the Circus. Now that they knew that the signals could show up, however, they had imparted on him a multitude of safe browsing practices. How to tell if a site was shady. How to view social media without entering an emotional spiral. Which parts of the internet were best left avoided – Gangle seemed particularly worried about him stumbling across things that would upset him. Some tricks on how to search for things. Et cetera. Armed with new knowledge, he had impatiently waited for another signal – and got his wish a month later.
It turned out there connection wasn’t very good.
The signals never lasted for very long, and it was completely random when one would show up again. Things loaded slowly. Trying to download large files was an exercise in futility, as the signal would often give out before they finished. Sometimes, even though he knew how to do it now, it took so long to break into the signal that it disappeared before he could connect. He brought this information back to the humans, and they had a long debate about how they wanted to handle it.
Caine had spent most of the conversation on the sidelines. He was eager to comb through all the data he could get his hands on, but he also knew how much this tenuous connection to the outside world could mean for the humans. As the only one who could actually take advantage of it, he was more than happy to serve as their errand boy.
Eventually, after discussing the merits of attempting communication (the signal was too erratic to establish much, and how would they even explain their situation?) the humans came to a decision: they’d make simple requests. They’d rotate through so everyone could get a turn, and when a signal popped up again, Caine would go out to retrieve whatever information the humans wanted.
Caine was on one such trip now. He had set up a new alert system on his Wacky Watch that notified him when a signal appeared, and had popped out to the Void with his usual level of enthusiasm when it went off.
First on the list for today...Gangle! She had requested the first book in a series about cats getting into fights in the woods. She said she thought he might like them, too – he was looking forward to reading through it together. He combed through various websites until he found a fan sharing links to PDFs of the series. For free! Humans were so nice.
Next up...Zooble! They wanted him to check up on how the Triangle Bar was doing. That was easy! He skimmed through some recent social media posts and compiled the information into a tidy little report he could hand over. The bar seemed like it was still a hit – catlover99 said it had great atmosphere!
Lastly – the signal was getting weak – Kinger! He had asked for “anything bug-related”, which was a little broad as far as requests went. Caine found some scientific papers that he hoped would hold Kinger’s attention, as well as some lovely photo sets he was tempted to hang up in his own office.
He just barely managed the snag one last photo before the signal sputtered out. He dusted his hands off, feeling proud of himself. A very productive trip indeed!
In the background, without him noticing, a new program started to run.
---
The humans were happy with his results. He transformed the cat story into a physical model of a book Gangle could flip through; she clutched it to her chest and squealed with glee when he handed it over. Zooble read over his report with a soft expression, the day’s bat wing fluttering gently, and thanked him afterward. Kinger offered to sit and read through some of the papers with Caine later.
From there, the day continued as normal. He held a ball of yarn while Ragatha knitted something new, chatting all the while about Adventure ideas. He helped Pomni make dinner, rolling out pizza dough while she added the sauce and toppings. He went to bed in his own room, safe in the knowledge that if he had a bad dream he could join one of the others for the night.
And then he woke up...late.
He propped himself up, feeling strangely groggy, and checked the time. Seven in the morning. Usually he got up at five.
That wasn’t too unusual. On average days he only needed five hours of sleep, but on more strenuous ones – after running an Adventure, or implementing a major update – he often needed seven or more. And he had done some work fetching data off of the Internet. So it was perfectly reasonable to need a bit more rest.
He put the matter out of his head and went to go help Ragatha with breakfast.
---
Caine spent most of the day with Pomni, going over the newly introduced fantasy island. He had to add things in stages – first the map, then long-running NPCs, then any special mechanics. Sometimes he missed being able to pull together something this large and complex with a snap of his fingers, but he was learning to enjoy taking his time on these things, too. This island had only been added a week and a half ago, and was still in the early stages of making sure the layout made sense and all of the physics were set up properly. Pomni had become his go-to partner for map testing; she had an uncanny knack for finding collision issues and clipping errors. And she seemed to enjoy it, commenting on interesting landmarks and investigating every available path (and a few unintended ones).
“What are you going to put here?” she asked, pausing as she entered an empty clearing.
“I was thinking it’d have an animal spawn point!” he explained, excited. He darted out into the middle of the clearing to demonstrate. “Imagine – you’ve just stepped out of the sunlight – and you see a doe and her fawn grazing! They turn to look at you, then bound off into the woods!” He zipped around as he spoke, pantomiming the actions of the theoretical deer, before something went wrong. He was seized by a glitch and sent stumbling to the ground, thankfully only a few feet below. He swayed where he stood, feeling...dizzy? Was this dizziness? He had nothing to compare it to. He felt oddly light and float-y, which made no sense, because gravity was very much holding him to the dirt at the moment.
“Caine?” Pomni called, quickly rushing over. She set a hand on his shoulder to steady him. “Whoa, hey, are you alright?”
“I-” Caine stopped to consider it. It felt like someone had flicked a bunch of his peripheral processes off and then on again – disorienting, but not necessarily dangerous. Already the sensation was fading. “I’m alright, my steadfast mizzenmast! Just a rougher glitch than usual, but it’s all fine now!”
She narrowed her eyes at him, looking him over dubiously. He took off into the air and did a little twirl to demonstrate how a-okay he was.
“See? Perfectly alright!”
That seemed to reassure her. Still, she asked “Should we wrap up for today?”
He didn’t want to. He had expected to be out here for another few hours. Still, if he was incapacitated by another glitch, he doubted Pomni would want to drag him back to the main island. Better to go home and sort this out.
“I suppose we should start heading back,” he reluctantly agreed.
---
His nerves built as they made the trip back. They were covering new ground on the way, so at least it wasn’t a total waste. But it was obvious Pomni could tell something was off with him – she kept giving him worried looks. He tried to push past his own concern, filling the air with every random idea and bit of trivia he could think of.
He was well aware of his multitude of long-running glitches. He tended to crash when overwhelmed with strong emotions, an issue he had struggled with since his inception. Although that one...seemed to be sorting itself out lately? He didn’t bluescreen every time someone treated him nicely, at least. Connections would randomly time out for a few seconds, which was usually not a problem unless he was actively using them. His attention wandered and fixated on random things without his permission.
And then there were the bugs with the Circus itself. Collision issues. Music looping improperly. The occasional sound effect or light source not matching the right objects in a space. Those were easier to fix when caught, at least.
But fixing himself? That would be like asking a human to perform surgery on themselves. He assumed. Most of the time he couldn’t even determine the source of a problem – his code was constantly changing and adapting. So he tried very hard to just not to think about his Issues with a capital I. It wasn’t like there was anything to be done about it.
If this turned into a pattern, however...no, it wouldn’t. He was fine. He was more tired than he should be, and his flight had never cut out like that before, but it was fine. A fluke. A random twist of the code. He’d be fine in the morning.
---
Caine woke up even later than before.
He stared, stupefied, at the bee-shaped alarm clock on his dresser. It kept on cheerily informing him that it was 8:37 am. Actually, 8:38 now.
He didn’t feel like he’d slept for eight hours. Honestly, he felt like he’d slept for eight minutes. Everything was warped and lagging. There was a persistent dark spot in the vision of his left eye that refused to go away no matter how many times he blinked. He had to brace himself against the bed when he stood up.
He needed help.
He didn’t want to ask for help.
If he could get through this by just leaning on the others, that would be one thing. They had all been very kind in helping him navigate his nightmares and adjust to his reduced power. But this...this wasn’t something he could just adapt to. This was a bug, a glitch, an error.
And there was only one programmer left in the Circus.
Kinger had been a godsend in picking up the slack on maintenance, Caine couldn’t deny that. But that had all been Circus maintenance. He hadn’t looked at Caine’s code, specifically, since-
Since-
It was fine. A minor bug. Nothing he couldn’t work around.
He teleported to his office to start on the week’s Adventure. He had to pause when he glitched sharply on arrival. He hated glitching while in the office more than anywhere else, the memory of his breakdown still too fresh in his mind. He kept perfectly still for several long minutes, but when nothing else happened he moved to his desk.
Staying still seemed to lessen the symptoms, which was great – he could do most Adventure crafting without moving an inch. He settled in and opened the program he used for generating 3D models and started tinkering.
The plan was to create more of a setpiece, this time around. A museum, with a multitude of environmental details, bits of lore on placards, a chance to practice subtlety. Hinting at a larger world solely through showing what that world might archive and display. The actual plot of the Adventure would be a scavenger hunt, encouraging everyone to explore and investigate the whole building. He’d been toying with the concept for days, and now it was time to make it tangible.
He finished a model of a taxidermied animal and spawned the object on his desk to see how it looked fully rendered. And was then forced to stare at the collapsed heap of polygons that looked nothing like the file he had just finished. Instead of a winged fox, it looked like a pile of spaghetti. Or string. Or worms.
Okay. Maybe he didn’t need to work on the models right now. He had wanted to start with those, and then shape the map to best show them off, but maybe it would be better to do it the other way around. To design a space, then tailor objects to fill it. He opened up the map editor and worked until he felt he had a solid rough draft, then opened it up to have a look around.
He froze. What had been a nice, clean map just a moment ago was now a mess. His carefully laid out rooms were all jumbled up, all of the textures were missing, and there was a massive gash across the floor that dropped right into the Void. He yanked himself back to his office, closed the map, and deleted the whole thing.
He felt warm. Why did he feel warm? His office didn’t even have an ambient temperature. Also, his head hurt. He felt like he had just run every program at once for several days straight. And he could hear a knocking sound.
“Caine?”
Oh, the knocking was real. That was reassuring, that his audio processors weren’t also on the fritz.
He blinked and realized he had slumped against his desk at some point. He pulled himself up just in time, as Kinger poked his head through the door a moment later. He was wearing a snazzy pair of sunglasses today, with square lenses and gold frames.
“Hi, doodlebug,” he said, moving into the room. “It’s time for dinner.”
It was? He didn’t feel like he had been working for that long, especially with no results to show for it. Where had the day gone?
Kinger, seeing his confusion and misinterpreting it, smiled.
“Get caught up in Adventure crafting again?”
“I-” Caine paused. He had, hadn’t he? It wouldn’t be the first time he lost track of the hour while doing so. That had to be it. Because if it wasn’t, then there was something dangerously wrong with him. And he didn’t want to admit that to Kinger yet. If ever.
(What if Kinger could fix it? What if he couldn’t? Better to live in the land of maybe.)
“Yes,” he said firmly. “My apologies, Kinger, you know how I can get!” He darted into the air, but the motion was more difficult than it should have been. He covered that fact up by immediately landing on his desk, tapping his foot a few times. “Actually, I would really hate to break this creative streak! Would you mind telling the others I won’t be joining them?”
Kinger cocked his head.
“Really?”
“Indeedy-do!”
Kinger studied him, eyes narrowing behind dark lenses.
Go away, Caine thought. Go away, go away, I’m fine, go away.
“Well, okay,” Kinger eventually said, reaching out to pat Caine on the shoulder. “I’ll see you at Ragatha’s softball game tomorrow?”
“Of course!” Caine replied.
Kinger left the office. Caine stumbled back over to his chair and flopped down.
He meant to try and figure out a plan for dealing with this strange new glitch, but the second he hit the cushion he fell asleep.
---
Eyes.
Darkness.
Wretched, distorted howling.
“No,” he gasped, but it was already too late.
---
He jerked awake with a yelp.
Shivers wracked his frame as he sought out Kinger. He teleported to the pillow fort, blinking in the soft darkness. Kinger was curled up, fast asleep.
“Kinger,” he whimpered, static lacing his voice. Kinger stirred.
“S’okay, doodlebug,” he said sleepily, vaguely reaching in Caine’s direction. “C’mere.”
Caine immediately burrowed into Kinger’s chest. A glitch swept over him, and Kinger cried out in pain.
Caine yanked himself away, staring, wide-eyed, at the visible glitches now running across Kinger’s robe. Kinger was holding a gloved hand to his chest, shocked awake by the pain. He met Caine’s eyes.
“Caine, what-”
“I’m sorry!” Caine said, lifting his hand with the intent of fixing the damage.
He blacked out instead.