Chapter Text
Dear diary
It’s me, ̶g̶a̶n̶g̶l̶e̶ Emily
This time, I have a good reason for why I haven’t written in a while
This will sound insane, thankfully, you are not capable of judging me or telling my parents, so I don’t care if it makes me sound like I’ve gone crazy.
After my argument with my parents about my issues, I ran away from home… I wasn’t going to run away forever, I just needed some distance, to be alone for some time. I wandered into the old building at the outskirts of the town.
I thought (like a fucking moron) to get to the rooftop, because clearly breaking into private property and risking tetanus exploring an old building is worth getting a nice view and some cute pictures.
Before I reached the rooftop I saw something, a VR headset connected to an old 90’s computer, with the whole yellow keyboard and CD port and everything.
That was when I made the biggest mistake of my life (which is saying something): I put it on.
The rest is… uuuuugh
I already wrote about most of this in my other diary (they meant nothing to me babe, don’t get jealous ;] ), back in the circus, and you know how much I hate repeating myself! Sadly, it’s not exactly like I could bring them out with me. A shame truly, considering how hard it was to convince Caine to give them to me and how much hours I had to put into them.
But it’s not like I can NOT write this down, so I’ll try to summarize everything as much as I can
I got Matrixe’d into a videogame called “The amazing digital circus”, there was an AI that controlled everything called Caine, with a silly looking but terrifying minion called bubble. He was… he wasn’t evil or malicious like AM, he didn’t want to cause us harm but he wasn’t like us, he couldn’t get us, he wanted to be loved by us and
Uggggh, I’m still unsure about how to feel about him. In any case, fortunately I wasn’t alone there, others were also trapped
We had to endure fucked up adventures where we were forced to play games, survive scenarios, resolve puzzles and be vored. The worst part is was that if you lost your mind, you would abstract.
I’m still unsure about WHAT exactly it meant to be abstracted, do you die? Do you go insane? Do you get expelled out of the game? Other? All we knew is that it was NOT pretty for those on the outside, so we tried our best to remain sane
After a few years of this tedious cycle, we managed to find a way out.
The good news:
1) my body hadn’t aged a single day (how? IDK, sci-fi techno babble magic or some BS I guess), so I don’t have to live as a digital copy of my mind while the real ̶g̶a̶n̶g̶l̶e̶ Emily died of dehydration or went back home (take that jax! I told you that your stupid NPC theory was Dumb! Who is the crazy one now!?)
2) time passes faster in the circus that in the real world, so I’ve been missing for a few months instead of a few years (still sucks ass, but still better than the alternative)
3) me and my parents managed to fix our problems, thinking that their daughter died or got kidnapped or ran away or any of those other things really made them see that my issues are not that big of a deal… success? In any case, we are now more open about our problems and communicate more often.
The bad news:
1) I can’t tell ANYONE about this, period. Not to my therapist, not to my parents, not to the police or my friends or ANYONE. Best case scenario they think I’m joking or lying and worse case I end up in a padded room.
I told the cops that I was kidnapped, that I never saw the face of my kidnapper and that one day I just escaped and ran away. I’m unsure if they bought it but at least it’s more plausible than the real deal.
2) I lost my job and I’m super outdated regarding news and memes
3) I have no idea of where are the others, if they survived or if they are okay. UGH, why didn’t we shared more personal information?! Sure, we couldn’t remember our names, but nothing was stopping us from sharing our cellphone numbers or e-mails! I guess that we assumed that there was no exit, and we didn’t have a lot of time to think and talk before leaving the circus.
...I’ll find them, I don’t care how long it takes: months, years, decades or my whole life. I’ll find them because I know they are looking for me as well… we survived a lot together, I need to make sure they came out of the other side
Oh well, mom is calling me for dinner, so I better show up before she breaks down my door with an axe (a girl disappears of the face of the earth for a few months ONCE and suddenly she can’t have privacy anymore!)
I’ll be back, sincerely, Emily