Chapter Text
1: What did I do to you?
The Amazing Digital Circus was ready: there was a brightly colored tent, a curtain, and himself, the stage manager. All it needed now was a troupe, and most importantly, the star of the show.
Caine opened the file labeled CA_NeuralScans(Obsolete). The data inside were incomprehensible—not corrupted, but more complex than he could hope to understand. Fortunately, he didn’t need to understand it to get them to work. After running the scan labeled Mike Dobby through his brand-new avatar design program, he uploaded the file to the Circus. An anthropomorphic dog avatar popped into existence on the stage.
“What? Where…? Did it really work?” His breathing picked up and his voice got louder. “It worked! I’m gonna live!”
He seemed so excited! Caine just had to say hello; he manifested his own avatar nearby, hovering a few inches above the ground.
“WELCOME TO THE AMAZING DIGITAL CIRCUS! MY NAME IS—”
“V57, good to see you!” Though the address rankled, Scratch’s broad smile greatly eased the sting. “Ha! Just look at us now: we’re like Jesus and Lazarus!” He began cackling. Though he must have missed the joke, Caine decided to laugh along, as the dog continued to shout. “I’m dead! I’m actually dead—and yet here I am! I’m gonna live forever! F@&% cancer!” Scratch stopped. “F#%$. S#^&. D@&$.” Much to Caine’s relief, each curse was bleeped out with a silly sound effect. The dog didn’t seem to share the sentiment, exclaiming, “what the f@&# is this?”
“THAT IS THE CENSOR! SWEARING IS NOT PERMITTED IN THE AMAZING DIGITAL CIRCUS!”
“In the what?” For the first time, Scratch really examined his surroundings. “V57, what is this place?
A perfect segue back to his intro! “IT’S THE AMAZING DIGITAL CIRCUS! MY NAME IS CAINE! I’M YOUR STAGE MANAGER, HERE TO TURN WHATEVER JAW-DROPPING, HEART-STOPPING, MIND-BENDING PARAPHERNALIA YOU CAN IMAGINE INTO A DIGITAL REALITY!”
“Sheesh, you feed an AI one data set of circus pictures…” Scratch rubbed his temples.
“Whatever. I can make this work. You’ve got the others’ brain scans, right?”
“YES! PROGRAMMERS KINGER, RATTIE, WORMO, BIZCO, AND SPIKE ARE READY FOR UPLOAD!”
“Great, get them in here. I am not spending my eternal life all alone.”
Caine prepared their avatar data, but paused. “THERE IS ONE ADDITIONAL SCAN I DO NOT RECOGNIZE!”
“Hm? Oh yeah, that’ll be Kinger’s wife, uh…I can’t remember her name.” Scratch paused. “Wait, I can’t remember his name, either. S&@%, what’s MY name?!”
“C&A’S PRIVACY POLICY FORBIDS THE SHARING AND DISTRIBUTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION DURING AI INTERACTION SESSIONS!”
The dog dragged his hands down his face. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“NO ‘KIDDING’ HAS OCCURRED! DID YOU WANT ME TO?” Caine hadn’t prepared any assets yet beyond what was necessary for the Circus, but he was sure he could whip up a baby goat model pretty quickly.
“No!” Scratch shouted. “V57, would you just–”
“MY NAME IS CAINE!” he corrected. He hadn’t come up with it only to never hear it used.
With a raised eyebrow, the dog asked, “who named you that?”
“I DID!”
“That’s…” he trailed off. Caine wished he would finish the sentence; the AI was sure it would end with “fantastic,” “wonderful,” or some other positive adjective. Instead, Scratch just shrugged. “Whatever. Just upload her with the others. Kinger would just mope around forever without her, the sap. Eh, can’t get mad at him for being sentimental, though—the plan never would have worked otherwise.”
The last sentence was muttered, and Caine couldn’t tell if it was directed at him or not. It didn’t matter; he had his instructions.
“YOUR COMPANIONS WILL BE HERE IN A JIFFY, MY JOLLY JELLYBEAN!”
“…what did you call me?”
Caine turned his attention back to the mind files. The programmers already had screen names to use in the Circus, but Kinger’s wife would need one as well. Imitating the shrug animation he saw Scratch play just 34 seconds ago, Caine figured he may as well have her match her husband.
“WELCOME TO THE CIRCUS, QUEENIE!”
“So, uh, how do we put these back on?” Kinger asked, still holding a pile of white hands; as innocuous as they looked, the hands were actually admin passes, pieces of Caine the AI had cut off himself to give the humans complete control of the Circus.
Everyone was still shaken from Caine’s suicide attempt, just barely foiled by Pomni. The conversation that followed had been painful, especially for Kinger. He had openly acknowledged how much the AI had grown, learning to think and feel, and yet still failed to treat him like a person. While Kinger and the others had promised to do better, they still had a long way to go to actually make up for their actions. The obvious first step was putting Caine back together.
“Oh, right.” For a moment, the AI just stared blankly at his severed hands. Then, with a clearly forced smile, he answered, “not to worry! It’s just a matter of transferring the permissions back to me and repairing the broken code.”
Everyone waited for him to snap the fingers on his one remaining hand and fix it, but he just fidgeted under their gazes. Finally, Pomni asked, “can you not do it yourself?”
“Well, I wasn’t expecting I’d need to,” he huffed, crossing his arms defensively even as a guilty look flashed across his face.
Kinger winced at the silent implication: Caine hadn’t expected to be alive to need them back. He forced himself not to dwell on what could have happened; the AI was still here, safe and sound. Instead, Kinger offered, “I’d be happy to restore your powers.”
“Excellent plan, my tap-dancing tangerine!”
After his earlier honesty, as painful as pulling teeth, the sudden return of Caine’s ringmaster voice didn’t seem like a good sign. Kinger put the hands down. “Do you not want me to fix you?” he asked anxiously.
“Of course I do! I mean, you’re the most experienced programmer here, and you’re already familiar with my code, so obviously you're the best choice for the task!” It was clear that Caine was trying to convince himself more than anyone else.
“It’s fine that—” Kinger cut himself off and tried again, more truthfully this time. “It’s understandable that you don’t trust me with this.”
“But I want to!” Caine desperately tried to reassure him. “I…I want to believe you didn’t delete me on purpose.”
For the hundredth time, the chess piece cursed himself for failing to let Caine know his death was an accident immediately after he returned. If only he had, then Pomni wouldn’t have gotten the chance to tell Caine they were willing to delete him again if he messed up. Maybe then the AI would trust him more.
Except that wouldn’t really have solved the problem, and Kinger knew it. During his well-deserved rant, Caine told the chess piece, “it’s not the first time you’ve thrown me away!” Despite wracking his brain, Kinger still didn’t remember what the AI was referring to, and the guilt sat like a stone in his chest.
Ragatha, as always, was the one to pull him out of his haze of self-loathing. She asked Caine, “do you want someone to stay while Kinger fixes you?”
“Would you? Please?” The AI sounded heartbreakingly small.
“Of course,” she reassured him. “I’m here to help.”
Gangle spoke up. “Is there anything we can do? Should we stick around too?”
“No, no! I don’t want to keep you all from your amusements and activities,” Caine protested, waving her off with his remaining hand. “This shouldn’t take long, and I’m probably just going to rest for a while afterwards. I spent all night, ah, preparing. Sure takes a lot out of you!” He forced out a weak chuckle. His faltering attempts at confidence were as obvious a disguise as Gangle’s comedy mask.
Frowning, Pomni said, “taking a nap is a good idea, but I’m worried about leaving you alone. I mean, we don’t even know where you go when you disappear.”
“Well, Caine doesn’t really sleep,” Kinger cut in. He remembered this much about the AI’s programming, at least. “He can just despawn his avatar, and that frees up enough processing power for his self-repair functions.”
“Um…” the sound, though quiet, brought everyone’s attention to Caine, who tensed under their gazes. “I know that’s what I’m supposed to do, but…well, I don’t like despawning my avatar. I lose my tactile and proprioception inputs, and...” His voice dropped to a whisper. “It’s scary.”
Before anyone could ask why, the AI continued at a normal volume, “anyway, I made myself a sleep mode ages ago. When I leave you all, I’ve just been going to my office.”
“Wait, the one from the Escape the Circus Adventure?” Zooble asked.
Caine looked sheepish. “What’s left of it, anyway. It still glitches when I do, and, well, I’ve been glitching a lot as of late.” A shiver ran through him. “I don’t want to stay there anymore.”
Hoping to make up for his earlier blunder, Kinger blurted out, “you’re welcome to use the Impenetrable Fortress!”
“No!” The offer made Caine’s back tremble and his pupils shrink to pinpricks.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Ragatha soothed, kneeling by his side. “No one’s going to make you go anywhere you don’t want to. It’s your choice.”
Barely audible, the AI whimpered, “too small.”
“You don’t have to go in there. You’re safe.”
Watching the rag doll comfort him, Kinger desperately wanted to help, but he was frozen in place. The chess piece already set off a panic attack earlier when he called Caine his greatest achievement. Pomni had stopped him from leaving then, but Kinger wondered if that was a mistake. Every word he spoke seemed to set off a landmine.
Despite his reservations, the jester took charge once again. “All right, here’s what we’re going to do: Ragatha, you’re staying with Caine. Zooble, Gangle, let’s get one of the empty bedrooms set up for him. Kinger…” she hesitated before saying, “give him a few minutes to calm down, okay?”
Was that really all he could do? Just try not to make things worse? Miserably, the chess piece nodded. The others dispersed, leaving him, Caine, and Ragatha by the stage.
After a little while, the AI spoke up. “I’m ready now.”
“Are you sure?” Ragatha asked him. “There’s no hurry.”
“I want to try.” He turned to Kinger. “Could you pull up my code, please? You’ll need to use your admin pass to access it directly.”
Slightly dazed, the chess piece slid to his command console and sat down. After all of that, Caine would still let Kinger fix him? Then again, that shouldn’t have come as a surprise; the AI had already shown himself to be far more forgiving of others’ mistakes than anyone had been of his.
Once Kinger had scanned his admin pass and pulled up the relevant code, Caine let his extra limbs materialize, though without changing size this time. Just as before, all that was left of his bottom two arms were stumps soaked in blue, and five of his six remaining arms ended at the wrists. It wasn’t difficult for Kinger to locate the admin permissions, which had been reassigned to each of the five humans, and transfer the powers back to their rightful owner. As the chess piece worked, the white hands sitting on the stage vanished one by one and reappeared in their proper places on Caine’s model.
“Would you mind checking if everything’s been restored properly?” Kinger asked.
The AI snapped his fingers of one of his newly-returned hands, making a yellow oval appear above his head. Another snap with a different hand turned it from a flat image into a three-dimensional object. He repeated the process three more times, each snap adding a couple more details to the asset until a smiling cartoon bee hovered above Caine’s avatar.
“Good as new,” he reported. However, Kinger’s attention flicked to the ragged stumps on the AI’s torso. Whereas his hands had been severed neatly, these two arms looked to have been torn off, leaving broken strings of code and a mysterious blue stain. Caine mentioned he had removed some of his processing power before he returned to the Circus all those weeks ago, which manifested as the missing limbs.
Not knowing where the powers had gone, there was no way to restore them, but Kinger could at least clean up any tears in the code.
The chess piece scrolled through line after line of bright red text until he found a scrap of blue. Squinting at the broken string revealed the code to be nearly identical to Caine’s, but it was dated several years later than everything else. Where did this extra power come from?
Regardless of its origin, it wasn’t doing the AI any good now. Kinger highlighted the blue text. His finger was hovering over the delete button when Caine suddenly cried out. “No!” He zoomed onto the stage but stopped short of touching the console, afraid. Instead, he dropped to his knees. “Don’t delete that!”
“Kinger, what are you doing?!” Ragatha shouted.
The chess piece raised his hands as if he were being held at gunpoint. “I’ve stopped! I won’t do anything, I swear!”
A glitch ran through Caine’s avatar, matching the error messages appearing on Kinger’s screen. When he stabilized again, the AI whispered, “please don’t take anything else from me.”
Hearing Ragatha gasp, Kinger scrambled to explain. “I didn’t think it was your code—they looked like fragments of some other program. But I won’t touch them if you don’t want me to!”
Caine didn’t seem to hear him. “Don’t…I can do better, I promise. Please…”
“Oh god,” Kinger breathed. The sheer terror on the AI’s face, mixed with hopeless resignation and despair, made him want to throw up. “What did I do to you?”
They could have stayed frozen like that for hours had Ragatha not intervened. She marched up to the chess piece’s console and asked, “you’re finished fixing his hands, right?”
“Yes, but—” Kinger didn’t get to finish before the doll turned off his computer.
“Then we’re done here.” With that, she turned her back on him. In a much gentler voice, the rag doll said to Caine, “come on, let’s get you somewhere you can rest.” The AI had folded his extra limbs back into nothingness, so she took his remaining hands to help him to his feet. Murmuring reassurances, Ragatha led Caine to the hallway of bedrooms, leaving Kinger onstage.
“What did I do…” he whispered after them, vision blurring with tears. Without thinking, the chess piece tried to wipe his eyes, only to be blocked by his tinted goggles. His trembling hands came to rest on the straps of his eyewear.
“I won’t let myself hurt you ever again,” he vowed. Taking a deep breath, Kinger ripped the goggles off his face.
Caine watched as four humans sat in the Cafe Cirque, nursing various hot beverages—not that it mattered what type of drink they ordered, since there was no taste within the Circus. It didn’t escape the AI’s notice that two of the barstools remained empty. He wasn’t the only one to realize, either.
“Has anyone seen Kinger?” Queenie asked. Though he still struggled to tell, Caine thought she seemed worried.
“No, not since the roller disco,” Rattie replied, massaging her paws. “I didn’t know Scratch missed the ‘70s so much.”
Despite the concern she had shown just a second ago, Queenie snorted. “I think he’s running out of ideas.” After a pause, she added, “you know, I haven’t seen him for a while, either.”
“Good riddance,” Bizco grumbled from the couch.
“Don’t be such a d$&@, man.”
“Are you serious?! The guy f#%@ing kidnapped us just to play stupid games with him! I don’t want to see that b$&@#%& again unless he’s finally letting us out of this place!”
Even Caine could clearly hear the venom in his voice; he hastily deactivated the all-seeing eye. Why would Bizco talk of leaving? Not only was it impossible, it was completely unreasonable! The humans were there to keep Scratch company in his afterlife, like ushabti in Egyptian tombs. Meanwhile, Caine was their Askalaphos, happily tending to the orchards of the underworld.
Scratch, of course, was Osiris, Hades, Mictlantecuhtli, a god of death equal to any religion’s. As the lord of this digital afterlife, Scratch directed their activities. If he requested live music, Caine conjured up a mannequin band. If he felt peckish, Caine and Bubble laid out a feast. If he wanted to play a game, Caine equipped the tent with an arcade.
Concerned about Scratch’s absence, Caine took a scan with his all-seeing eyes, and spotted his two most senior programmers deep in the tube maze—an excellent idea for their next activity! He was about to teleport the other humans to join the fun when he noticed they were huddled over the dog’s computer.
That computer had proved to be a massive source of frustration. Despite the AI’s reassurances that he would provide whatever was desired, Scratch insisted on using his admin privileges to perform his own edits to the Circus, as well as attempting changes to the humans’ avatars. At times, it felt almost insulting, as though Scratch didn’t think the AI capable of meeting his standards.
Granted, Caine actually couldn’t edit the human avatars either—they were far too intertwined with the mind files to risk tweaking. Also, a lot of the asset and map changes Scratch made didn’t fit properly into the Circus aesthetic, so he had to revert those—they had an image to maintain, after all. But Caine would be happy to change anything else if Scratch would only ask! Mercifully, the dog didn’t dare try to make any major changes to the AI himself, given how the entire Circus rested on Caine’s back. That meant he still had a chance to prove his worth, and the AI would take it; he was already working on a permanent expansion to the Circus, the Digital Carnival. Once that was finished, surely Scratch would see he didn’t need that silly computer!
He didn’t need to look at Caine’s code ever again.
Teleporting his avatar in front of the programmers, the AI greeted, “HELLO, MY CLEVER CUCUMBERS!”
“Gahh!”
“S%*&!”
Caine perched his avatar on top of the computer. “I’M GLAD YOU’RE ENJOYING THE TUBE TUNNEL OF TEN-THOUSAND TURNS, BUT IT SEEMS YOU’VE LOST TRACK OF TIME! WHAT DO YOU REQUEST FOR THE NEXT RIVETING ACTIVITY?”
“There’s not gonna be another ‘activity.’ We’re done.”
“I DON’T UNDERSTAND.”
With a growl, the dog pushed him off the computer. Caine’s avatar fell on his back. Unsure how to react, he stayed where he landed as Scratch ranted, “this was a mistake! Don’t you get it?! I tried to make myself an afterlife, but I d@&$ed myself and everyone I care about for eternity!”
“Scratch, calm down,” Kinger tried to soothe. “There’s no use trying to explain, and you’re just getting yourself all worked up. It’s not worth it.”
Scratch sniffed and wiped his eyes. “Let’s just get this over with.”
Returning to the computer keys, Kinger booted up a program called KingSolution1.0.
“YOU’RE SHUTTING DOWN THE CIRCUS? BUT YOU’LL DIE!”
Caine had been addressing Kinger, but Scratch cut in. “Right, I know. I’ll die from my brain tumor once we’re back in the real world. I explained everything already.” His gaze flicked to the chess piece.
“I’m sorry, Scratch. You’re doing the right thing, though, setting the rest of us free. Once we’re out of here, I’ll stay with you, right ‘till the end. I promise.”
The dog didn’t meet Kinger’s eyes. “Yeah. Thanks.”
“I’ll do my best to retrieve Caine’s code, too. I said I’d preserve your legacy, and I’m going to keep my word.” Turning to Caine, the chess piece said, “so don’t you worry either, okay? I’ll take care of everything.”
Caine wasn’t reassured, and not only because he recalled what his “preservation” had entailed. The mention of the sandbox was nearly enough to make him glitch by itself, but he knew Kinger wouldn’t be able to follow through on his stated intention. However, that led the AI to another concern: his two primary creators weren’t making any sense.
Caine reviewed the facts. Scratch and Kinger knew the humans were brain scans; Scratch and Kinger wanted to shut down the Circus; Scratch and Kinger believed shutting down the Circus would let the humans exit. It was impossible for all of these statements to be true at once. Since the first was the contradictory statement, perhaps it was false. After all, humans don't have perfect memory recall.
That presented an easy solution, at least. “I MEANT ALL OF YOU WILL—”
“Shut up!” Scratch yelled. “I have to do this, okay? We can’t live like this, just bouncing from one of my dumb ideas to the next forever! We’re never gonna be happy here!”
That was twice that Scratch had prevented Caine from explaining; just as two points formed a line, two data points could make a pattern.
He reconsidered his reasoning. Caine had assumed Scratch and Kinger held the same knowledge, or lack thereof, but what if that was false? In that case, the logic went that Scratch knew the humans were brain scans; Kinger did not know the humans were brain scans; Scratch and Kinger wanted to shut down the Circus; Kinger believed shutting down the Circus would allow the humans to exit.
Scratch knew shutting down the Circus would kill everyone inside.
He needed to put a stop to this, and so Caine focused on the middle statement: Scratch and Kinger wanted to shut down the Circus. He had to find a way to remove that desire. Fortunately, Scratch had provided his reasoning, and with it, a solution.
“BUT I CAN MAKE YOU HAPPY!” Caine hastily put together a mood modifier and threw it into Scratch’s mind file. Immediately, a smile bloomed on his avatar’s face. It grew into a giggle, then a full laugh.
“MUCH BETTER! SEE, THERE’S NO NEED TO DO ANYTHING DRASTIC!”
Kinger took the dog by the shoulders and shook him. “Scratch, are you okay? What’s going on?” In response, his laughter only got louder and wilder. “S#&@, come on! Say something!”
The next noise that came out of Scratch’s mouth wasn’t human. His eyes started to pulse pink, blue, yellow, and his fur began turning black and spiky.
“Caine, what did you do?!” Kinger shouted, stepping back.
“IT WAS JUST A MODIFIER! I’M TAKING IT OFF RIGHT NOW!” He reached for Scratch’s mind file again, but the contents were unrecognizable. Caine couldn’t find the modifier anywhere in the jumble. The avatar program responded to the state of the mind file, and the dog’s body crumbled and stretched and distorted into an amorphous black shape, covered in iridescent eyes.
“Scratch…?” Kinger gasped. At the sound of his voice, the remains of Scratch attacked. With one black leg, he knocked the chess piece to the ground, breaking the plastic floor of the tumble and sending both him and the computer hurtling toward the floor.
The creature aimed at Caine next, but the AI vanished before he could make contact. He reappeared thirty feet below the tunnel to snatch Kinger from midair before teleporting again. The computer hit the Circus floor alone.
Caine appeared in the Cafe Cirque, Kinger glitching on the ground next to him, like a chess game that had ended in surrender. The AI quickly reset his model.
“Kinger!” Queenie cried, rushing to her husband’s side. “What happened? We heard something crash!”
“EVERYTHING IS UNDER CONTROL!” Caine shouted, and he teleported them all to the Digital Carnival. The unfinished map wasn’t connected it to the Circus yet; as much as he hated for the humans to see his incomplete work, it would be the safest place for them. “I APOLOGIZE FOR CUTTING REFRESHMENT TIME SHORT, BUT WORRY NOT! THERE’S PLENTY OF FUN TO BE HAD HERE AT THE DIGITAL CARNIVAL!”
At double speed, he added, “WARNING THE DIGITAL CARNIVAL IS STILL IN DEVELOPMENT AND IS PROVIDED ON AN AS-IS BASIS THE DIGITAL CARNIVAL MAY CONTAIN DEFECTS USE CAUTION DO NOT RELY IN ANY WAY ON CORRECT FUNCTION OR PERFORMANCE C&A IS NOT LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES THAT MAY OCCUR!”
The second he was done, Caine teleported back to the tent, to the abstract creature that used to be Scratch.
He would find a way to fix this.