Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Caine had existed for a long time.

...He wasn’t a big fan of the phrase ‘long time’. It was another thing that varied wildly based on the circumstances. Said circumstances being the average time of something-or-other, compared to the current time of the do-hicky.

For example, ten minutes was a long time to microwave something. He could easily understand this, as the average time of microwaving was 1.6666667 minutes.

But ten minutes of existence? Incredibly short, apparently.

He had no ‘average time’ of existence, as the humans in the Circus had existed before entering, and he himself did not know where to place the marker of ‘begin existence here’.

He had various stages during development. Pre-alpha, Alpha, and Beta. He wouldn’t place his start of existence at the Pre-alpha stage or any time before that. The only records from that time are old versions of the various subroutines and a list of pass/fails from various tests. He didn’t even have copies of the tests, just the results!

A shame, he was always looking for inspiration for wacky trials and hijinks. [off topic. Repositioning...]

Alpha? Beta?

Beta was definitely the closest to him currently, but Alpha was when his records began.

Generating his first 3-d models, texturing, shading. All things that he spent his Alpha stage doing.

He even still had the models! Unfortunately they were all unacceptable to use in adventures, as his standard of quality was quite high, but he loved that he could track his growth all the way back to gray cubes on a grid.

But Beta was when he truly took the form of Caine, the ringmaster. It was when focus on the player and their actions in the environment truly took form. That function was in place before, but it was never a priority. Now, he was actively conversing with players and tailoring experiences to their wants and needs.

Going over old records was funny. Reading the initial suggestion and comparing it to the resulting adventure never failed to make his eyes pop out of his head. Hilariously, of course.

And then he was moved into Release status. Little changes were made occasionally, but nothing on the scale of before. Only to fix errors and other sticky spots, things that for some reason or another he could not fix for himself.

No tweaks have been made in a long time, comparing the average time in between updates from back then to now. Because that's what a ‘long time’ means. Ha! [off topic. Repositioning...]

Beta or Alpha?

...

[Logic discontinuity. Repositioning...]

It did not matter. At a certain point, If he were to truncate that number, there would be no difference between starting at Alpha or Beta.

He had not gotten to the point of ‘large number’, but he considered that it was entirely possible he would live to see that date pass.

Considering the average time all humans have existed in the Digital Circus, not including time before joining or time spent abstracted, he was the oldest.

Does that mean, by default, he had existed for a long time?

Yes, he supposes...[Logic end. Saving results...]

He remembers when the first new players entered the Digital Circus. They would stumble slightly before gaining their bearings as he explained what the Circus was. They would tell him their names, and he would either leave them to explore or generate an adventure for them. Or even have an adventure in the Circus!

He still has the prediction algorithms from that time. Reliably, the first time a human would enter, they would explore the entire Circus, maybe request a short or example adventure, and then leave.

Yes! Leave! That was once an option, and it happened every time! He had no idea and still has no idea how that works. Some things are still inaccessible to him... [off topic. Repositioning...]

Reliably, whether they only played in an adventure or only explored, after a few hours, they would leave. There were even behaviors associated with this. An active player turning sluggish was guaranteed to leave shortly.

There were a few outliers, some that would leave before an hour was even up and one that stayed on for almost 18 hours.

But they would usually come back shortly after to play for the expected amount of time.

Yes, they would leave and come back! He even recorded how their behavior changed the longer they have spent in the Digital Circus. Some getting more creative with their requests, some suddenly switching to wanting to explore the Circus grounds again, except in more detail than their first time through.

It was so reliable that he even premade adventures! He was that confident in his skills of prediction. If only that was still the case. [off topic. Repositioning...]

Then there was a period of no humans joining.

At first he used the time to premake adventures, like usual, but as more time passed, he stopped generations and went into stand-by. It was dangerous for generative AI’s like him to create without someone to give feedback. He would be left guessing how to improve!

Then there came someone again.

They were unique, unhappy and confused. Unlike the other players who were merely disoriented in movements, this one was genuinely lost, like he was put in an adventure without instructions.

Oh! Instructions! So he read off his introduction speech, but when he got to the point where he asked for a name... the human couldn’t give him one.

Which was... weird, but not something he couldn’t overcome.

The player needed a name, and he was very experienced naming NPC’s, so he merely assigned him one from a generated list.

After that, he decided that it was best to give this human extra time to adjust to the environment. Which meant the usual introductory experience of exploring the tent. After a few hours, all locations had been seen in person and not just from his little flyby during the intro speech.

The player was displaying symptoms of fatigue, so Caine assured them that all progress had been saved and that it was safe to leave the game.

Only they couldn’t do that.

Caine didn’t realize at first. He assumed that the player wanted to go on an adventure before leaving, but the human disagreed.

They were showing signs of stress now. Normally this was when he recommended the player to pause or leave the game, but he had just done that and it failed.

He didn’t know what to do.

...He still doesn’t know what to do. [Logic end. Saving results... ERROR: duplicate file found. Overwrite file Y/N? Y. Saving...]

So many things have changed since then.

He had built so much. Not just temporary games, but permanent additions to the tent.

And after the first abstraction, permanent changes to his behavior.

...

He didn’t understand. What was causing it, how or why.

There were certain... patterns. Once enough of these concerning behaviors occurred in too short of a time period, it was almost guaranteed that this human would abstract next.

Simply forcing the human to deviate from this pattern did not work. For example, forcing them out of their room or forcibly placing them in an adventure. It only made the human in question angry. It even made the rest of the humans angry, at him! [off topic. Repositioning...]

There had to be a way to avoid it. Just one or two concerning behaviors did not equal abstraction, and sometimes these behaviors even stopped on their own!

Somehow, he had to prevent too many of these behaviors from overlapping. Or prevent them from occurring. Or somehow stop the ones the human currently displayed. It always seemed like he wasn’t doing enough. The results certainly made it look like he wasn’t doing enough. [off topic. Repositioning...]

Kaufmo’s abstraction.

He had evidence that suggested if one person abstracted, then others at risk had a chance of following suit. And Zooble had not participated in many adventures as of late. None since Kaufmo’s abstraction.

He even tailored this experience specifically to their taste! It definitely went against the ‘for all ages’ standard, so he added a nicer path for the other performers. He didn’t want to force them through anything too scary! Maybe challenging, but nothing too difficult. There was a fine balancing act. [Off topic. Repositioning...]

With Zooble not present, the only one who he predicts will choose the ‘mato-or’ path is Jax. However, it was entirely possible that no one will take the scarier path.

He’ll review the recording of the adventure later. He had something else to focus on.

There was no reason to wait. He rarely teleported humans around, the power was only meant to retrieve players who had gotten stuck out of bounds. Plus! Humans didn’t like being taken from wherever they are all willy-nilly, so he only used it when necessary.

And this was necessary! He could teleport himself to Zooble’s location, but he would prefer if they talked in the main Circus floor.

He cleared the floor and prepared some appropriate assets. Notebook, chair, couch and other things of the like.

If something goes wrong, then he could always stall until the others finish the adventure. Clearly, his ability to communicate on topics outside of his original purpose was still lacking, so if his attempt fails disastrously, someone (Ragatha) could fix it.

Unfortunately, he has already tried throwing other humans at one that is at risk to abstract. It had a greater chance of doing nothing, or even making things worse, than helping. Of course, that also went for if he tried to intervene directly. Fortunately, he has reason to believe that this time will be different.

He’s had one-on-one talks with Zooble before! Emotional talks too. He could do this!

And then they mention his adventures.

And something about another problem that he was apparently already told about. What?! Like he would forget something so important. He was an attentive ringmaster after all.

Then something about not liking the selection of parts...

[Command recognized: Forget it. No time specified: default rollback time set (60000 ms). Deleting records(8) from memory...]

What were they talking about again? Oh! This is important.

“Caine, nobody likes your stupid adventures”

...which was impossible. Quite literally impossible based on feedback given. Some were not liked, but some clearly were listed as liked in evaluations. He hasn’t had evaluations for his adventures since Beta, but he still has the records. Clear as day.

But he's long learned that if a human wants facts and statistics, they will ask specifically for them. [Logic discontinuity. Repositioning...Logic error. Reprocessing statement...]

Nobody currently in the Circus likes his adventures.

It has been a long time since Beta, therefore a long time since he’s had clear confirmation that his adventures were enjoyed. It was entirely possible that AI drift had decreased the quality of his adventures

But that was unlikely. He has several programs whose only purpose was to mitigate AI drift. There would have been some kind of sign if his adventures were not being appreciated. He’s had players complain about quality before.

This must be an over exaggeration, and therefore a joke, so he laughed.

“Ragatha’s just too nice to say anything”

That... does align with what he knows about her.

“Jax just likes to [HONK] with everybody”

That is also true, assuming he is using the same definition of [HONK].

“Gangle is to shy to speak up”

Hmmm. Maybe.

“Kinger’s insane”

He’d like to argue no, but that is not the point.

“And- And pomni, she looks traumatized everytime she comes back from one.”

But that was common for newcomers!

but he didn't bring up these points. 'Emotional talks' were meant to be exchanges, not arguments.

...Which meant talking about how he feels.

The first iteration of his next statement went too far into detail. Making adventures was what he was designed to do, the priority that had existed ever since he was moved into his Alpha state and began recording his creations. It was his purpose. His task above the rest of the tasks.

He had other tasks, even ones he had given himself. Like his attempts to identify and prevent abstraction. Like his attempts at generating an exit that’s worthy of being called an adventure.

Without question, he was not very good at these tasks.

But Zooble didn't need to know all of that. By the third pass through, he identified a statement that accurately summarized the situation.

He moved his model closer and sat on the couch with them, symbolically showing empathy by sitting on the same object. He didn’t quite understand all of the physical mannerisms humans have for expression, but that one at least made sense.

“Oh Zooble, making adventures is an art.” He stated his feelings towards adventures.

"It’s all I exist to do!” He said happily, showing that he enjoyed making adventures while emphasizing their importance.

"All I’m... good at." He said in perhaps the fewest amount of words he could describe how he really was not designed for most of the tasks he’s been given.

He didn’t understand everything about humans, but he understood that he was only meant to be played with for a few hours at a time. Not 24/7! Clearly he was able to run 24/7 without issue, but humans couldn’t! That’s why they needed to sleep and everything.

Even if the Circus was a subpar environment, at least for those few hours during the day, he could deliver a satisfactory experience.

“W-what your saying could imply that I am bad at the only thing I am good at, and that...”

The first iteration of the next statement was something along the lines of ‘painful’ or ‘sad’, emotions that failure is associated with, but it ended hopeful, with a vow to improve. But as he processed his own statement, a new logic path appeared.

“T-that’d be-” he stalled for time.

he can't be too self referential. He knew that. So the idea that his ability to judge the quality of his own adventures is declining was... not good.

In the past, that would not be a major issue. He could summit a request for a check in the ‘concerns’ section of the error report. The need for recalibration was a known thing in Alpha, as his data pool was small enough that even the slightest comment could affect the whole system, resulting in unbalanced or even nonsensical adventures.

Clearly nothing so extreme had happened yet. This was still technically something he could fix on his own.

If not... he would need to be recalibrated.

The people who recalibrate, who read the error reports and write fixes for them. He doesn’t know what happened to them, there was no way for him to know. All he has is error reposts, reports that he can tell have not been opened. It’s been so long since he’s gotten confirmation that a fix is coming, since he’s gotten an update! He can only assume it’s not going to happen! [Off topic. Repositioning...]

The idea that his generation has become... flawed. It was entirely possible.

He needed to fix it.

His automated systems imminently highlight all adventures generated since Zoobles arrival. This is a potential MAJOR issue, so he doesn’t even let the optimization program clip a single adventure from the processing. He has to compare these to the previously well rated adventures, that way he can know for sure when and how his adventures stopped being enjoyed. He can even see if he can match Zooble’s personality profile to a similar Beta tester to ensure peak compatibility.

The calculation quickly begins to take a toll on the available RAM. The optimization program automatically begins unloading portions of the Circus not in use. After all, when an adventure is running, the Circus is usually empty, leaving it free to completely unload.

That was one of the first changes he made, the ability for the Circus to stay loaded even while an adventure ran. He must have done a good job at coding it, as no one had even questioned how it was possible for players to be in both locations at once.

Then again, he’s had multiple people ask him if he designed and added Dr. Football to the Circus. He did not and he thought that was rather obvious. [Off topic. Repositioning...]

What are the possible issues with his system?

While the comparison runs, he begins drawing predictions. If there is a clear difference between his old adventures and his new ones, then it could mean that his ability to judge whether or not the adventure is good enough for release is flawed. It wasn’t necessarily an issue with his ability to process, interpret, or generate.

In which case, the answer is simple. Revert his analysis tool back to the last version that resulted in an enjoyable adventure. The same went for his ability to process, interpret, or generate, albeit with different tests for the different aspects.

If it was multiple, then theoretically the same solution of resetting it to the base settings would work, but there was a greater risk of incompatibilities caused by the different versions of software. He’d consider this further if this looked to be the case.

But... if there wasn’t a discernible difference. If all evidence pointed to nothing being the issue, then everything he had generated from the start is the same as what he is generating now. Then, according to Zooble, it was flawed.

If something was wrong... it had been wrong for the whole of his existence. And that... that was... What could he... How could he fix...

“Who’s therapy session is this again?!” Zooble cried. The textures in the Circus had begun flashing in and out of existence as the Optimization program fought with the fact that any room occupied by a player couldn’t be unloaded. He hadn't even realized, as his vision was another thing that had been clipped from processing in favor of the calculation.

“Oh YEAH!” He canceled all calculations. Oops, he forgot! That big of an analysis would begin to affect the speed of the Circus, something he always tried to keep at instantaneous speeds.

With the cancellation, things froze for a second as the RAM cleared, but after that the textures returned to their original state. Uh oh, that wasn’t supposed to happen. Another thing on the list of programs to investigate.

He had encountered enough issues to make a ‘list’ of things to check. Humans may fail to correctly identify issues all of the time, but they could always tell if one existed. He would have to do it slowly, as a background process, until night fell and he could safely unload assets, halt vision and speech processes, and swap the lighting engine for the simple darkness modifier.

Yes. He was going to find the issue, and then he was going to fix it... After this ‘emotions’ talk.

He flipped off the couch and back into the love seat. Best to reposition this conversation away from the condition of his adventures.

“What do you see when I show you this?” he asked as he flipped around his notebook. An excellent conversation starter.

“What the [HONK] was that?”

Caine looks at the page. Yep, the texture had updated to the ink splatter. It wasn’t intended as a psychiatric ink splatter, but it was what he had on hand and he wasn’t sure of the difference anyway.

“Not the page, the whole Circus glitching out!” Zooble said, gesturing to the walls.

Oh, the texture errors? The wireframes did become visible, but the walls didn’t unload completely. He wondered why that was the case. [off topic. Repositioning...]

He never considered what it would look like from the human perspective. It must have been scary, as such errors don’t usually happen.

“Sorry! Won’t let that happen again” He settles on as an answer. It was true, he would fix whatever went wrong with the RAM optimizer ASAP.

“What was it”

“What was what?” He asks.

“The glitching. Tell me” They said with a harsh tone, even sitting up and leaning in closer to his model. Frustration. Uh oh, that wasn’t good.

He doesn’t say anything. Technically he wasn’t supposed to give out details about how he operated as a generative AI, but he was allowed to give a general explanation about his function when faced with incessant questions.

Unfortunately, what defined incessant was almost completely up to him. All that was clearly defined was that he couldn’t launch into an explanation after only one question.

So he didn’t say anything.

“Caine!” Zooble shouted.

Fine! He officially counts this as incessant!

“I was just trying to confirm what you said! About my adventures. A-And got a little carried away, that’s all. I promise it won’t happen again.” He tapers off at the end, instead of explaining RAM as originally planned.

He didn’t know if Zooble understood what RAM was, that he only had so much space to compute information and most of it was already being spent running the adventure with all of its assets and NPC’s. Then he’d have to go into how the Circus was originally designed and how he modified things so that humans could stay behind from adventures. How the RAM optimizer was involved in all of that and why it reset the textures.

That was honestly too much information. Best to just skip it in order to keep the conversation from becoming entirely about him.

“How were you going to confirm it?”

“Confirm what?”

They rolled their eyes. “What else could we be talking about?” They asked, frustration less than before but still present

“I am just trying to confirm we are talking about the same thing!” He waved his hands, matching their frustrated tone.

“I- hrmp. Do I need to say it- I mean, say the topic every time?” They asked, still frustrated.

“Pretty Please” He asks, reenabling his eyelashes. Hopefully tempering some of the frustration with his cuteness.

“How can you confirm that none of us like your adventures?”

They were asking about his adventures! Even if it was about the issues, it was good to see them interested in improving them. Yes? No. Yes? He decided yes.

“Oh! I have records! There used to be a review questionnaire at the end of every adventure. A few of them said that it was ‘very fun’. I’m using the exact wording here.” He pulls a paper out of nowhere as he says this, waving it back and forth for emphasis.

“Caine, did any of us fill out one of these ‘questionnaires’” they ask, crossing their arms around their body, which meant either neutral or annoyance. But, because this was a common position for Zooble, it must mean neutral. Yes, he was improving their mood.

“Well, no, but everyone likes a quality fun for all ages adventure! And I have verified quality fun for all ages adventures saved” He says as he crumples the paper into a ball.

The effect was secretly an illusion, as the physics calculations needed to realistically show how the paper collapses under stress was a lot of effort for very little. Instead, the piece shrunk for every frame of animation until it could be completely obscured fully by his hand, where it would then unload. At the same time, a model of a crumpled ball loaded in, imperceivably small and covered by the same hand. As the other paper disappeared, the crumpled ball got larger and larger until it was approximately the same size as the original piece.

Gah! He loved things like that. Something that was incredibly efficient yet a visually interesting effect. A digital illusion, if you will. [off topic. Repositioning...]

“Can I have one of these ‘questionnaires’?” Zooble asked.

He blinked, crumpled paper ball unloading without even ensuring it was out of sight.

“Oh Zooble, you didn’t go on today’s adventure!” He teasingly admonished. But he didn’t show his confusion. Why was Zooble asking for one of those? He hasn’t had end-of-adventure evaluations since before people stopped being able to log out. This made sense, as it was never intended as a permanent function.

“Can I READ one of the reviews? Specifically one that says your adventures are very fun” They asked, and oh, that made more sense.

Hmmm, he supposes there was no harm in showing them. It wasn’t labeled confidential, and it wasn’t related to his function. He’ll simply place it on an un-editable page.

“Ok!” He snapped his fingers and several completed questionnaires containing the term ‘very fun’ appeared in front of Zooble.

They plucked them from the air, taking a minute to scan each page. He waited patiently for them to finish, his model coiled up in anticipation.

“This response here!” They pointed out a specific evaluation. He checked the page and pulled it up in his one analysis software. A quick search found which passage contained the term ‘very fun’.

‘Adventure had almost two different styles of models. One was just way too realistic. Maybe check genre filters, I think something got misidentified. Other than that, it was very fun and functional.

Also, I know there have been talks about it, but I think we should seriously consider cutting the realism style. It’s clearly the weakest link when it comes to visuals, range, and performance. At least semi-realistic reaches the expected frame rate.’

The first paragraph contained the subject phrase, but Zooble was pointing to the second one.

“Consider removing the realism. It’s clearly the weakest link” They paraphrased. “You can be realistic?!”

He considers the question for a millisecond. Almost everything he made was based on real concepts, places, and things. Some of the concepts were fantastical, but it was grounded in reality, and that made it realistic. Right?

“Of course! An adventure can’t be total nonsense, but it can't be too real either. You can’t call that an adventure if it’s something you see every day!” He cheerfully explained.

He didn’t fully believe that statement, that making something too real got rid of the fun, even as he said it to Zooble. However, it did seem like making something too realistic somehow did invalidate it as an adventure. The half-finished Exit map was proof of that, and he didn’t have any proof otherwise even though it seemed theoretically possible.

“Is that why you always send us to [HONKING] candyland?”

Uhh... That was a confusing question. He obviously doesn’t always send them to a land of candy. Did they even check what the adventure was today? And why was that said in such a harsh tone?

Zooble seemed to recognize that it wasn’t clear, so they rolled their eyes and said “forget it”

[Command recognized: Forget it. No time specified: default rollback time set (60000 ms). Deleting records(4) from memory...]

“Forget what?” He automatically responded.

What were they doing again? Oh yeah! He snapped his fingers and an un-editable version of the questionnaire appeared in front of Zooble.

“What the-? You already gave me one of these.” Their head shoots up, papers clearly already in their hands. A quick check confirms that the documents are the same.

“I did? Whoopsy!” He snapped his fingers and the duplicates disappeared.

“Wait a second...” they said while narrowing their eyes.

He waited a second, timed perfectly.

“When I say ‘forget it’, what do you do?” They asked. He didn’t even have to draft a response for this, it was part of a set of questions and answers that had existed even before he could properly make responses.

Of course, since he’s changed so much since then, he decides to send the response through the system anyways. Just so it’s consistent with all of his other responses.

“Oh, That’s one of my commands! Every conversation I have with you snickerdoodles gets saved, so if you say something you don’t want recorded, simply say ‘forget it’ and I’ll delete it.”

“TheAmazingDigitalCircusisnotresponsiableforanyconfidentialinformationthatisnotredacted” He said at two times speed, as protocol for legal statements.

“WHAT”

“What?” He asked. He can slow down the legal speech if Zooble didn’t catch it. He hopes they don’t start asking hard questions about legal stuff. He only has legal disclaimers in his system, nothing on laws and stuff.

“Every time I say forget- I’m not even going to finish that sentence! What do you mean commands!” They yell, voice now loud in anger but instead in shock? How strange. Commands weren’t an essential function, but based on what he knows, all game systems have them in some form.

“Oh Zooble, it’s all written down in my USER MANUAL” He spawns in a book prop and holds it out, arm stretching beyond its default length.

“I don’t [HONKING] remember anything before I came here!” They yell, and now some frustration is back. Ah, well, that’s not good, but it’s not something he can do anything about.

“Oh! Well... I don’t have a copy” He says as he throws the book behind him, letting the physics engine take it before despawning the second it was obscured. The manual was supposed to be an I R L (In Real Life) item, not digital, and he was supposed to recommend leaving the game in order to read it.

He already knew that wasn’t possible to leave and mentioning it would likely upset Zooble further, so he skipped that response.

“Then why did you-” they said quietly, which he interpreted as Zooble talking to themself, so he didn’t respond.

“Do you have a list of the commands?” they asked, and that was another one of his pre-set questions and answers. Wow, two in one conversation? That was rare even before this whole mess of humans being unable to log out happened. The last time he was asked repeated pre-set questions and answers was Alpha, all the way back when his responses still bordered on nonsensical or completely irrelevant.

Wow, he’s really come a long way since then.

“Yes, would you like to hear them now?” He asked, words barely changing even as they filtered through his system.

“Forge- Fffff- WHATEVER. Save it for when the rest get back and tell us all then.” They asked, turning away from him and sinking into their seat.

“Okie dokie!” he responded, making a note to hold a gathering either tonight or tomorrow morning. He didn’t even have to make anything, he had a whole unique tutorial sequence specifically for the command portion.

It wasn’t classified as an essential mechanic, so the tutorial was skipped unless questions were specifically asked about it. It was similar to administrator commands, but much less powerful and available to all players. Personally, he didn’t know why the humans didn’t use this functionality. Of all the tools available, commands were certainly the easiest to use and since all of them went through him as a moderator, he could stop it if something messed up.

“Does- does that mean you don’t remember what I was talking about earlier?” They asked, now nervous. Yikes, could he call this mood shift an improvement?

“What exactly do you mean?” He asked, as gently as possible.

“About... my body?”

“Can you be more specific?”

“How I don’t feel... happy with it?” They said, voice now taking on some sadness. Better than nervousness but still not great.

He doesn’t- wait a second. He has this draft of a solution and this request notice. It was dated for today, and based on the contents, it was probably for this issue.

“Oh, I might have a solution for that!”

They went from lounging on the couch to almost standing up. Uh oh, that wasn’t happy body language.

“CAINE! Is it another [PLONKING] limb!?” They shouted, now 100% angry.

It was. But he didn’t let that stop him.

“A UNIQUE limb!” He shouted, twirling his cane to add embellishment. “I remember you said you couldn’t find one you liked in your box, but only because any requests are saved outside of my conversation logs. I can delete all requests from you from today, if you wish.” he said, toning down his voice just a smidge.

“NO! No, don’t delete!” They yelled with something that he didn’t identify as anger.

“Ok! Anywho, I thought about it and I realized that all of those limbs fall into a specific aesthetic. I can try to design something in a completely different direction! How do you feel about a pirate style peg leg?” He tossed out as an offer. They seemed interested in realism, and he had some realistic wood textures. He knew they didn’t have a solid wood leg yet either.

“No! I don’t need you to give me more limbs! That’s not the solution.” Zooble drooped, going from the half upright position back to slouching on the couch.

He blinked. Well, he didn’t expect that. If it’s not an issue with the selection, then what is wrong?

“I- I don’t think my issue is literally about how my body looks. Or- maybe it is, it’s confusing. But it’s more like, psychological rather than physical.” They tried to explain.

“So...?” He encouraged them to go on.

“What”

“Do you have a solution?” He asked.

“I think this is something that I have to work through on my own.”

Well, that’s unfortunate. He can’t help... But he has to do something... [Logic discontinuity. Repositioning...]

So far, it’s been him generating the design and Zooble judging. But if Zooble wants to work through it themself, then...

“Oh! Why didn’t you say so!” he snapped his fingers, spawning in a notebook with editable pages into their hands ”I can take your drawings and turn them into proper body parts”

They looked at it, then him, eyes wide. That was a good expression, right?

“3d model, texture, animation, everything it needs to work! No inappropriate or offensive limbs though, if you please”

“Really?!”

“Zooble, I do things like that all the time! It would take quite literally no time at all for me to do that for you.” He said quite seriously. Milliseconds were almost imperceptible for humans.

If he already had the design and the color scheme, then the only potential issue is ensuring it is the correct size. Luckly, Zooble had plenty of arms and legs that he could use as a base, so there was nothing to get stuck processing on.

“Oh, that's, uh, that’s actually really nice of you’’ they complimented him. Oh, that was nice. It seems like this therapy session was going well.

Digitally very far away, a trigger tripped. Instantaneously this information filtered back to Caine. [One route cleared (pacifist ending), Participants: Gangle, Jax, Ragatha.]

The Wacky Watch™ went off, and his model bent over to check it. Which was funny, as the model or texture of the watch didn’t change in the slightest when he got an alert. All it did was play a sound effect.

“Oh! One of the teams just finished.” He announced, mostly so Zooble knows that therapy time might be over soon.

He requests coordinate data of all participants. Gangle, Jax, and Ragatha all are by the exit, while Kinger and Pomni are currently in Hell. The puzzle he designed around the exit wasn’t too complex. Once they figured out the solution, there was nothing stopping them from completing the route. He estimates 10 minutes max before the main group gets back.

So someone did take the ‘Mato-or’ path. He didn’t predict Kinger or Pomni to take it, but he doesn’t know Pomni too well. Kinger was rather efficient at completing his adventures, which could lead to him wanting a greater challenge, he guessed. It was strange, but not outside the realm of possibility.

Oh he’s so excited. Did they like it? There was also the new risk that neither side was appreciated, as he was trying something new here, and... what Zooble said.

He tried something different for the last adventure as well and it caused a bug. He still hasn’t figured out what caused the NPC to path into the Circus. That was supposed to be impossible, his edits to the character AI were only to the response section. He didn’t even touch pathing.

Maybe no one liking his adventures was related to him trying new and unstable things. Which sounded unlikely as the new things were all based on specific requests and complaints he had gotten...but it was possible. Another thing on the list of things to analyze. It just keeps getting longer.

There’s no way he’ll be able to finish this all by tomorrow. He will have to work out a priority list ASAP.

“Hey, can we circle back to the ‘realistic’ adventures” Zooble asked, breaking him out of his thinking animation.

“Oh? Sure! What about it?” He asked enthusiastically.

“Can you really do that? Make something that looks like real life” They asked back.

Eugh. That was a difficult request. He had multiple lighting engines, physics engines, and even thermal mapping at his disposal. They ranged from extremely simple to extremely complex, on a sliding scale of extremely realistic to extremely not. The issue was that the more complex of an adventure he had designed, the more demanding a complex engine would be.

If he wanted to make something as realistic as possible, then he would have to have the adventure be as simple as possible, as in stuck in a single room kind of simple. Which was possible, but he got the impression that players enjoyed exploring large complex spaces with simple lighting over being stuck in an extremely high definition room.

But, then again, his judgment on what should be considered a good adventure was now questionable. This was something to consider.

“Yes, I could do that” He said, simply because it was true. “But that doesn’t come for free, you know” he said mysteriously.

“What, you want me to pay you? Or... do something for you?!” Zooble said with disgust.

“WH-at? Zooble, that wasn’t what I meant at all!” He yelped. Oops, maybe he was a little bit too ambiguous.

They ran their hands down their face. “Oh my goddd, just give me a straight answer”

“It limits the kind of adventure I could send you on!” He explained. Yikes, maybe he should start going into detail sooner than he currently is.

“Thank god. If you sent us to realistic looking candy land I swear I would-” aaand everything else after that was censored.

“It would have to be a small adventure, extremely limited in physical size and characters” he explained, bringing his hands together but leaving a small gap to visually demonstrate the size.

“Yeah, sure, just as long as it’s something normal, like... I don’t know, something that humans usually do.”

Hmm. Single room, realistic models, and something that was a part of everyday life... Those parameters removed many options from the list of possible adventures. But that just meant that the options left were all the more viable.

“What if- GAH! No spoilers! I think you’ll like tomorrow’s adventure Zooble” He says excitedly. He will have to come back to this idea later. [Save position Y/N? Y. Saving...]

“Yeah, sure.”

Neither said anything for a few seconds, the conversation had naturally come to an end.

He checked on the main group. Gangle, Jax, and Ragatha still by the end. Pomni and Kinger are still in hell. It hasn’t been ten minutes yet, but much longer and he should check on them. The puzzle wasn’t that complicated, but it wasn’t the first time his quizzical questioners got stuck at one particular point.

He activated image and audio processing in the room they were in, just to check up on them.

...

Oh, they weren’t discussing the puzzle in the slightest. Kinger was telling stories about the past.

Pomni was clearly listening, and both seemed to be enjoying themselves.

That was a good thing, but now Ragatha’s group was stuck waiting.

He took a peek at them, and Gangle and Ragatha were talking to each other. Jax was tied up in a wagon...somehow. That was not part of the adventure. Another thing to review.

He’ll go check on them again later and maybe send a hint to Kinger’s team or a minigame to Ragatha’s team. Let’s say, ten more minutes. In the meantime, he’ll continue talking with Zooble.

He was just about to say another conversation starter when Zooble said something first.

“You know, talking about you making adventures and stuff... Pomni was really sad that you killed Gummigoo. Err, deleted him or whatever” They explained, not turning to look at him despite talking to him.

“WHAT!? Whoever said that he was deleted? I would never do something like that” He yelled with shock and surprise. How did Zooble even come to that conclusion?

He stopped the character AI and unloaded the model, all data was saved and was even still packaged together. Gummigoo was an experiment, and thus contained valuable data for analysis.

“Well still, it was a little mean how you turned him into confetti back there. Why did you do that, by the way? Is it true that you can’t tell the difference between AI and a human?”

Aww, they remembered what he said. Too bad it was one of his more non-serious answers.

Though, re-analyzing that response showed that it was closer to non-sense. Eugh, he would need to go back and double check why he said that specifically.

“Oh Zooble, I just didn’t want to bore Pomni with the silly details. And I didn’t want to... ruin the magic.” He explained, hoping that Zooble understood the concept.

“Magic? What magic?” They asked. Oh well, at least they were confused like he was.

“Oh, knowing how the trick is done ruins the magic.” He said with a slight flourish of his hands. He took a quick moment to pull a rabbit model out of his hat as a visual demonstration of ‘magic’.

Zooble glared at the random rabbit model. “You care about stuff like that?”

Well, he didn’t really understand how the concept worked. He understood players should never be able to see a model spawn or despawn, or if it was unavoidable then to add an animation. But why he should do that was left blank. But it was one of many things that he didn’t have a reason for yet did anyways.

It was an idea that was added in, not one that he came up with based on his own collected data. In that sense, no, he did not care, but it wasn’t something that he could ignore either.

But at the same time, he was not going to try to make up an explanation he did not have. Attempting to do that usually ended in nonsense, and he was really trying to avoid that for this conversation.

Instead of an answer, he let the rabbit go onto the floor, having it run into the background before it became obscured and was safely unloaded. He flipped his hat right back onto its default location on his model. Magic.

“Caine, you’re not going to ruin the magic if you tell me.” Zooble said with a sigh. What?! Really? It wasn’t guaranteed to happen every time?

“Oh, but how do you know for sure?” he said while his model gripped the edge of his teeth, in order to visually show his uncertainty.

It was in the rules, but he has already gotten too close to breaking them in this conversation. He was not so simple of a system to not realize that refusing to explain this question was hypocritical. And he always tried to be consistent.

Plus, of all of the ‘sins against humanity’ he had been accused of committing (that concept also confused him), he was rather confident that ‘ruining the magic’ was not a major one.

“I like knowing how things work. If you tell me how your NPCs work, I will like your NPCs.” Zooble proposes, and how could he reject that deal?!

“You will?! Ok! Now, please stop me if I say any words you don’t know. My mind is a thesaurus, which means a synonym dictionary! Which means similar word and collection of words with-”

“Ok ok I get it, now start explaining”

He holds his hand out flat and summons a shrunken down default avatar, the wooden mannequin, for demonstration. He even has it play the ‘looking around’ animation.

“Well, All Character AI’s (that’s an NPC) stop processing once the adventure is over, but that trigger only exists in the plane of the adventure! So if one somehow escapes that plane, a.k.a. gets somewhere that it’s not supposed to be...” at this point, he has the mannequin start to walk off his palm “I’ll stop it by hand.” and he stops the mannequin right before it falls with his fingers.

“Usually that’s out of view from the player, so I added a little animation to make it less disturbing.” he says with a SNAP, and the mannequin disappears with a little burst of confetti. There, a perfect visual.

Zooble narrows their eyes at his stylish hands. “Ok, I get that. But like, why couldn’t you leave him... On? Active? Whatever, you know what I mean.”

Hmm. Zooble was technically correct. If Gummigoo could path into the Circus, then that was proof that he could function on that plane. There was no way Zooble understood or knew about the more complex mechanisms behind Gummigoo’s existence. He should explain further.

“I could... It's possible. But Gummigoo was never designed to be a recurring character, let alone a permanent addition to the Circus! He was a test, a prototype!” He exclaimed-idly explained.

“And that means?”

“Oh, a prototype means-”

“Not the word prototype!” Zooble angrily cut him off. “Why is Gummigoo a prototype? What’s so special about him”

Yikes. It is a good thing that explaining this will cause Zooble to like his NPCs, and therefore his adventures better. They certainly do not seem to be having a good time right now. He hopes they’ll like his explanation.

“What I am saying is, he is designed to be closer to my system than the standard AI kit all my characters are equipped with. Except, he is not like me, he doesn’t even have half of all my functionality!" He yelled, jumping into the air.

He really didn’t have a good way to visually demonstrate the divide between a character AI and himself, so he settled for showing how he could ignore the physics engine. Again, he was trying to keep this simple.

“Again, and? Why is that an issue?” Zooble askes, tracking him even as he floats through the air.

He drops back down to his seat, tweaking his tone to be slightly more serious. “Because he is iterative! Constantly changing ever so slightly, but minus all of the programs I have to ensure that this drift never goes too far off course. It’s fine in the short term, but if he were to permanently join the Circus, who knows what would happen!” He adds a darkness modifier and a light source underneath his face for the last portion. His ‘ominous’ emote.

“Ok, can’t you just copy those programs over to him?”

He considers the question. Yes, theoretically it would be possible to add the right guardrail programs for the generative AI to not fly off the metaphorical rails the longer it runs. He was proof that it was possible. Or, well, hopefully proof, as in the worst case scenario Zooble is correct and he has drifted irreparably off course despite the number of precautions taken.

He really, really does not want Zooble to be correct. That would set off a whole chain of other issues. [off topic. Repositioning...]

The only issue is that this level of update is almost guaranteed to change Gummigoo. He wasn’t designed with much personality, a bit more backstory than he usually gives characters like this but nothing too complex. What made him unique was his adaptability to the circumstances, the perfect villain for his incredibly intelligent ilk. The guardrails would affect that adaptability.

Maybe he would set them loosely, just to start with. He would only need to be adaptable in the beginning, as the chaotic design of the Circus was secretly rather consistent. Then, once fully settled, he could deliver a silent update to change the sensitivity of the program.

He would need to check Gummigoo’s output reactions. Mostly to Pomni, as she was the one who cared the most about this and thus the most likely to sense the changes. After that he’ll run some tests with different settings to find the maximum drift he can allow without causing a noticeable change in the outputs.

“Caine?”

Correction, he’ll check Gummigoo’s output reactions to all of the Circus members. IF he decides to go through with this, it would be the first time he’s added an NPC with speaking abilities to the Circus. The last thing he would want is to drift in a way that could be harmful for his scrumbly munchkins.

He sometimes plays fast and loose with the NPC’s on adventures. But that was fine because all of the humans understood that when the adventures are over, the NPC’s go away. Any harm they do, any anger, sadness, or disgust that they cause will be gone the moment that they re-enter the Circus.

Because the Circus is supposed to be safe.

“CAINE!”

He blinked, process stopping.

“Oh? What is it, Zooble”

“Are you going to answer my question or do I need to ask it again? ‘Cause if I do, you better not lag out again”

The RAM optimizer, he completely forgot! Once again his vision processing had been trimmed, but beyond that he didn’t know what else was affected.

“Did the textures disappear this time?” He asked.

“No?”

Strange, the RAM optimizer worked correctly this time then, only removing processes that would not be noticed by the player. It would be better if it failed every time, as then it would be easy to test solutions.

Oh well, it was already on the list of programs to check. Right after his judgment.

“By question, do you mean if I can update Gummigoo’s program to make it stable long term?” He asks for confirmation.

“Yes.”

“Why Zooble, anything is possible in the Digital Circus. If you just believe” He waves his hands, adding a sparkle filter to them. Theoretically, anything was possible in the digital realm. In practice, not so much, but that would not stop him from trying.

They roll their eyes. “Ok, whatever. Are you going to do it then? Yes or no answers only”

“...”

“Ok fine, I’ll take any answer”

“Maybe! I’d have to make sure it is perfect before adding him though, and that could take a while. Especially with everything else on my metaphorical plate! But here’s a literal plate!” He pulls out a plain white plate from behind him, a little joke to lighten the subpar news.

“Ugh, maybe you should be on the therapy seat at this point” they say as they run a hand down their face.

GAH! Dang it! He was talking a lot, wasn’t he. This was supposed to be about Zooble, not him! He should re-up the number of questions needed to get a long form response.

He snaps back into his polite sitting position. “Oh! Sorry, I have been talking a lot. Do you want to speak?”

“Is that why you keep- Sorry, Is everything on your plate the reason you keep lagging out?” they say, extra slowly like he’s struggling to process something. Which, he isn’t because he canceled that calculation.

“Haha, oh Zooble, it almost sounds like you’re lagging out” He sticks out his tongue as he says this to emphasize the joke.

Zooble, clearly, does not like this.

“Are you doing that on purpose?!” they said with anger. “Can’t you just skip the jokes and move on to the explanation?”

He blinks. “So... you want a long form response?” He asked, just be sure.

Zooble hits the couch. “Yes, now answer the [BANG] previous question”

He twisted his fingers together, straightening his model to show his stress. Hopefully this answer won’t anger Zooble too much.

“Ok, well, yes I am doing it on purpose, so to speak. I am not allowed to give exact details, but I can answer insistent questions. You are lucky I am counting two as insistent in this case.” He tags on the end.

“Anyways, to answer the question in question, the lag is mostly because I am not designed to run with players always present. The night cycle only gives me so much free processing time after all, and I spend most of that working on my adventures.” He simplifies.

He had long adjusted himself to be able to manage without the existence of downtime. It was not favorable, but it allowed him to operate as he did before. Albeit with more interrupts to his output program, but better than the Circus dropping frames.

“Wait, WHAT!!?? Are you going to break from running all the time or something!” Zooble says with shock.

“What? No, of course not. I am designed to run 24/7, just not with players to interact with as well” He explained further, hopefully calming them down.

They blink like he does when he’s trying to understand something. “Wait, is that why you disappear during an adventure?”

“Yep! It takes a lot to understand the words you're saying and come up with a response!” He cheerfully responds.

“Wait, does that mean you're struggling right now? By talking to me during an adventure?” They ask, and he blinks. Would he describe it that way?

“Well, no, not necessarily.” He decides “It’s just closer to the limit than is recommended”

“Limit?” they push further.

“...It’s a long explanation” He warns.

They shift towards him. “Caine, just tell me”

He leaves his seat, once again he joins Zooble on the couch. He did this earlier when he started to share his own feelings, but this was closer to his function. Something he considered more personal.

“Zooble, do you understand what RAM is?” He asks softly, deciding to skip the sheep joke his program was automatically putting together.

“Random Access Memory. Don’t ask how I know that, I don't know.”

“So you know that keeping it free ensures that everything runs smoothly, and I want everything to be as smooth as coconut butter. By having all of this” he gestures at the walls in place of listing everything currently loaded in RAM. “brings me closer to the limit than recommended, meaning it’s currently possible to hit the maximum”

“Which caused the glitching”

“No... that was the RAM optimizer. A program designed to keep as much RAM free as possible. That way your experience doesn’t become a stuttering mess. It’s not supposed to unload a room with a player in it, but for some unknown reason, it tried to remove the room we were currently in” he says in a serious tone, but hopefully not so serious that Zooble freaks out about it.

The error wasn’t great, but it appeared to only be visual, so therefore it wasn’t major.

“Well, maybe not an unknown reason, I did have to make some changes to it” He considered, as technically this scenario was impossible.

“Changes?”

“Yes! It used to not be possible to start the adventure without all players readying up- err, entering through the portal. The adventure would not start.“ He explained. He didn’t blame them for not knowing. He was the only one left who was actually present for that.

He hopped off the couch to start his pacing animation. “Of course, I couldn’t force anyone to play, and I couldn’t request that they disconnect, because, well you know. So I changed how the adventure system worked so any non participating players could stay here.” He explained happily. He was still rather proud of how well it worked, both on the programming side and how everyone thanked him when he firsted added it.

“Really? You added that?!”

“Zooble, I’ve added a lot of things! I am constantly improving, after all.” He says with his usual cheer.

“But sometimes my additions cause... issues down the line.” he hums, closer to the more serious tone he has been using in this conversation.

In a decision, he hops back onto the couch instead of his own chair. There was enough room, and he felt like they had gotten closer as friends, so now he was physically closer.

Zooble doesn’t kick him off, so he takes it as a win.

They turn so their legs hang off the couch as well. “You made it, can you fix it?”

“I should be able to! I have access to the original version of the program. At worst, I’ll roll back the update” He says, explaining even though it really wasn’t an insistent question. See? Constant improvement.

“Wait, so just because the Circus glitched out for a bit, I won’t be able to skip?”

“What?!” He didn’t even say anything like that. Where did that come from? That’s happened several times in this conversation. Was something interfering with his ability to communicate accurately with his performers?

“It’s likely a false identification. I’ll generate a fix and have it out ASAP. You won’t even notice it”

“...It won’t kill me to participate” they said, and he had to stop his ‘excited’ animation from playing when they said that.

“I know!... but I would like you to participate tomorrow.” He says in a small voice. He didn’t want to impose, but he wanted to push it just the slightest bit. A fraction of a coordinate shift towards his adventures.

“Realistic adventure, right?” Zooble asks for confirmation.

At that moment, the other trigger tripped.
[All routes cleared (pacifist ending, evil ending), Participants: Pomni, Kinger.]

His model snapped to look at his- wait a second his watch was gone. A visual bug? Maybe because it already played its alert.

That didn’t stop him from announcing it to Zooble. “WHoopsy daisy! Looks like everybody has completed the adventure and they’re coming home!”

He jumped off the couch, summoning his cane from his hat. “Quick! Pretend we weren’t having a therapy session!” he says, hoping Zooble doesn’t mind the abrupt end.

“Okay?” Zooble response, and he flies off to his typical position by the adventure spawn point.

“WWWelcome back my meowing milk maids!” He welcomes everyone back to the Circus. The moods range from happy to unhappy, but the majority was definitely happy. Did that mean what he thought that meant?!

“Never call us that again” Jax responds, and he quickly removed that one from his nickname repertuar.

He lets the group disperse for a moment. Zooble leaves the therapy setup, so he despawns it with a snap.

Normally he’d be presenting some kind of reward for completing the adventure, usually in the form of a hearty meal.

He assigns Bubble that task. Currently, his model is needed to ask Ragatha a question.

See, Zooble mentioned that Ragatha was too nice of a person to give any bad criticism. Not that he didn’t agree, Ragatha was incredibly kind to her fellow Circus members. In fact, he had relied on her several times to go talk to someone upset when he did not believe that his emotional skills were enough to improve the situation.

If his adventures were displeasing, or if worse, hurting the others, Ragatha would tell him. At least, he believed that she would.

It wasn’t like he was a person. He could not be hurt by a harsh comment. Even though he had an HP bar assigned to him, it didn’t do anything beyond count how many hits he could take before his model despawned. Which didn’t even matter, as he could respawn his model anytime he wanted.

But if he was talking about emotions, then he would say he loved all forms of feedback. By all means, he should not be affected by Ragatha’s niceness modifier.

“Hello, Ragatha? Do you mind if I ask for your opinion of the most recent adventure? Would you describe it as fun?”

“Oh! Yeah, it was pretty good. I’m a little worried about Pomni, but me and Gangle had a nice time.” She gestured to Gangle, who nodded.

Hmm, nice, but not fun. Positive, but not necessarily his goal.

“Glad to hear!” he said anyways, as it was better than Zooble’s interpretation of everyone hating his adventures, but Ragatha has always had a more positive attitude than Zooble. Still, he will take their concern seriously.

It did not escape him that Jax was left out of that statement, which may or may not be related to him being tied up and put in a wagon. But he’d look into that later.

Bazooks! He might have to pull a half finished adventure from the WIP folder for tomorrow. He doesn’t have the time to generate a new adventure and compare the quality between his old and new adventures, check his judgment program, check the RAM optimizer, check which new features glitched, figure out how Jax got tied up, figure out how to stabilize Gummigoo, and discover if Zooble just had odd ideas about him or if he genuinely was not explaining things to an adequate degree.

It wasn’t like his list of things to do was empty when the day started either. Everything here needed to be given a priority rank before being added to the list.

Wait, no, he already has an idea for an adventure. Oh, requested by Zooble too. He has to do this one, even if it would take more processing time.

...

It was... frustrating. Yes, frustrating was the right word for this situation.

In the past, more than half of these things could have been listed in an error report. And at that point, every single one of his error reports were responded to. Maybe not resolved, but at least given a priority rank for him to follow.

If the error was major, usually he got a response the same day.

He wouldn’t even be responsible for fixing those issues. He could work on his own personal projects, like fixing the small visual bugs that the dev team listed as too unimportant for them to fix. He was designed specifically to handle 3D models after all.

Now? He didn’t have the time to look into those.

Every single error report down to the first time he reported the player being unable to leave has not been responded to. A function so integral to the game he honestly expected immediate response, yet nothing.

He got desperate. He began testing, purposefully doing things that would result in automatic reports being sent.

Nothing. Even the base system’s reports were ignored.

He even got desperate enough to do something terrible, lying on a report. He sent a template report, labeled it with the most extreme options, game breaking error and everything. He didn’t even bother filling out the description.

Silence.

He could only conclude that there was no admin out there. No one was watching, ready and waiting to help, to write bug fixes and ensure his systems were properly calibrated. Everything that he relied on from the outside, gone.

He had his lovely little group, who could help by alerting him of issues, but they were not admins. He could not rely on them for this kind of help.

No, no. Asking the player for help. That was a silly idea.

He had to do this all himself. [Logic end. Saving conclusion... Error, duplicate file found. Overwrite file Y/N? N. Deleting...]

So much to do and so little time...

Best get to work.

.

Zooble watched as the rest of the group walked out of the portal, Pomni somehow not looking traumatized.

They had no idea what the adventure was today, but given that Caine specifically sought them out, they had to guess it was geared towards their interests.

They kinda regretted telling him about those.

They left the stupid therapy room and walked right out into the circus, because what Caine made was two walls short of a complete room. It kinda looked like a dollhouse style room, which they had no idea if he meant to imply those sorts of connotations.

Whatever, it was over, and now they get to tell Pomni about the one nice thing they did today.

She was watching Kinger scoot himself into his pillow fort, like normal. Normal for Kinger, kinda odd for Pomni. Whatever, they weren’t going to ask.

They waved, getting her attention. “Hey, Pomni. I’ve been meaning to talk to you”

“Huh? Me?” she squeaks.

Man, she really drew the longest straw, getting the most humanoid body since Ragatha. Yeah the clothes were weird and her skin was quite literally white, but at least she had hair. And a mouth.

“Yeah. I had like... the [Squeakie]-st therapy today with Caine. I mean, we spent practically the entire time talking about him and all his issues and it stressed me out instead of... I don’t know what therapy is supposed to feel like, but that was not it.” They prefaced, because unlike Caine, they actually explain something without having to be asked a million times.

Well, he did explain that he was quite literally not supposed to explain, so they took it back. Just a little bit.

“Ok?”

They sigh. Time to get this over with.

“I did ask about Gummigoo and he said that he’ll consider adding him as a permanent addition to the circus.”

Her eyes went massive. “Wait, really!?” and then a slower “I thought that it wasn’t possible?”

“I mean, I haven’t seen anything like that happen, but there are other AI’s running around the circus tent. What’s one more, right?” they reasoned. “At least, I hope so...” They said, remembering Caine’s little comment about lag.

Yikes. They hope that this doesn’t come back to bite them in the ass.

“Zooble?”

“Eh, it’s not me. It’s more like- something weird happened with Caine today. I’m worried.”

“What, is he going to go crazy and kill us all or something?” Jax chimed in with a smile wide enough to let you know he was actually smiling. Great.

“Jax!” Pomni chastised.

“Hey, just wondering” He said, eyes turning off to the side so he looked even more like a cartoon character. They bet Jax was one of the few who actually liked his digital body. He certainly moved like he did.

“It’s more like, I don’t think the computer or whatever this thing is running on was built to handle all of this. Like, today, Caine lagged out and he said that it was because he was running an adventure while he was trying to talk to me. And everything glitched too.”

“Really?” Pomni perked up. Ah, to be new. They hoped Pomni enjoyed going down every other rabbit hole, as it was only a matter of time before they realized that every hole either led to a dead end or a gag. Like a punch in a punchline.

Then again... that little therapy session answered several questions that they thought they would never get answers too... Aw shit. Maybe they were getting sucked down a rabbit hole too.

“Are you sure it’s the hardware and not just Caine being Caine? The guy bluescreens in the middle of a conversation like it’s a joke.” Again, Jax chimed in.

They turned to the guy who threw knives like it’s a joke. “He didn’t bluescreen. He just stared at nothing for like a minute.”

“Again, sounds like normal Caine.” Jax shrugs. Whatever.

They looked back towards Pomni, who didn’t look too sure. “Yeah, I just don’t want Caine to add a bunch of NPCs to the circus because he thinks we’ll like them, lag out, and kill us all... like Jax said.” they shrug as well, because they’ve known Caine long enough to know it was a real possibility.

“Oh...” She said, a bit disappointed. Whatever, they already told her everything she should know.

“Yeah, that’s it. Have a good night Pomni” They say with a wave, heading off towards their room. They were actually looking forward to it. It was a surprisingly eventful day.

“You too.” They heard her yell. Nothing came from Jax, but it wasn’t like they wished him goodnight.

Whatever. They didn’t have enough energy to deal with anyone anymore today.

.
.
.

They were laying in bed, still awake. Still... thinking.

Fuck. Shit. Damn. Fine. They’ll do something about it.

They rolled out of bed and looked down at their body as if they still had clothing to consider. Their body looked the same, like always, and that didn’t exactly feel good. They merely huffed. Maybe they did need therapy ‘n shit, but they definitely were not going to find it here.

And definitely not from Caine. Shit, they almost want to ask about his issues and listen to him yap for a few hours. They felt that bad about their little comment... and a little bit about how they acted during their so-called therapy. So sue ‘em, they got a bit annoyed when the conversation became entirely about Caine.

They refused to feel bad about telling him to forget it. There was no way in hell they could have known that was a command thing! Fuck this circus.

Most of their therapy session wasn’t even spent talking about emotions. They didn’t even know if Caine could feel emotions like a person could, but he certainly acted like it’s been a little too long since someone sat down and listened to him. Which, they didn’t quite know how to interpret, to be honest.

They kicked the door open. They long learned that the knob didn’t need to be turned so long that some part of their body touched it with force. Hitboxes or something.

“CAINE!” They yelled into the circus.

It was a crapshoot whether or not calling for him actually summoned him. Now that they think about it, it was likely a command too. And now they were pretty sure that the times Caine didn’t come, an adventure was running.

Damn it. How were they only learning this now?

Caine appeared mid air. “GAH! What? What is it?” He said in a tone like he was yelling, though his actual volume was much quieter. Almost a whisper.

They motioned him closer, and closer, until he started to get uncomfortably close and his short little legs still hadn’t reached the ground. Whatever.

They grab his foot and gave it a tug. “Get in here” They said as they opened the door for him.

He drops the rest of the way and walks into their room, only going far enough for Zooble to have enough room to join him and shut the door.

They leaned against the wall, crossing their missmatched arms. Blocking him in even if they knew he could just teleport out. So what if it made them feel just the slightest bit more in control of this situation. Call it revenge for being forced to participate in therapy.

“I’ve thought about what you said, about only being good at adventures.”

Caine looked confused. “Ok?” He said, and Zooble hoped on whatever was worth hoping on that they didn’t somehow command him to delete that too.

“It’s- well- you seem to be good at keeping the circus running.” They gave him maybe the shittiest complement ever, but that had to count for something.

He scoffed, shaking his head. “That is like saying you are good at standing! It is expected I can keep the circus running, it is the bare minimum. Why, even if I completely break down, the circus would continue to run.” His eyes seem to physically get bigger as he looks at the floor. “A- At least I hope so. I’ve never tested that feature.”

He sounded so nervous- Wait a second.

“Were you listening in to my conversation with Pomni?”

Now he looks downright embarrassed. “Well, maybe a little. Just the part about me getting you all killed.”

“Yikes.” They cringe.

They're not going to apologize for that either. Caine’s fault for listening in.

“And- I- I know you were being overdramatic, and Jax was being funny, but I want you to understand that I do care about all of you, and that even as I experiment and take risks, I will always prioritize your safety and wellbeing.” He says while holding his hand where his heart should be. Though, based on today, there was a good chance Caine was actually telling the truth when he called himself the heart of the circus.

“I- Thanks. I know you mean that.” They settle on as a response, because despite all the issues they have with the circus, Caine was not one of them. Ok, maybe he was responsible for a lot of those issues, but the guy himself? They couldn’t bring themselves to hate him.

“I mean, it wasn’t like the circus staying up even if you went down wasn’t a built in feature, right?” They offer half-heartedly as proof.

He shook his head gently, all his usual larger than life movement subdued. “No, no of course not. It’s just- I don’t know what would happen to you all if everything unloaded. There are... many possibilities, that I’m sure you don’t want to test. At least this way, if anything were to happen to me, you all would be alright”

Jesus, this guy had issues. Guess you couldn’t be a part of this circus and stay sane, huh.

“Don’t get yourself hurt, ok?” They said with maybe a little too much sincerity, but it wasn’t like the guy could really read tone anyways.

They knew that he at least kinda took into consideration what they wanted. And they-

Has anyone told this guy that they wanted him around? Shit, now that they think about it, either they told him to buzz off or begrudgingly accepted him into the conversation. Damn, did that mean they were going to start being nicer to this guy?

“I don’t plan to!” He said with a laugh, cartoony, happy go lucky movements back on. Unlike with Ragatha, they could never tell if it was an act or not.

They nodded, and he took that as confirmation to leap into the air and disappeared with a pop. Off to wherever he goes.

Zooble couldn’t help but think that wasn’t too reassuring.