Work Text:
Caine had returned to the circus. But the color had not.
The world around them continued to rot into oblivion. Cubes and slides and funhouse structures continued to sink through the floor, leaving gaping holes to a bottomless void. If things kept on as they were, the entire Digital World would disappear. And the troupe would die with it, whether from a quick, painless death like Caine, who had simply blipped from existence, or from something far worse and prolonged. A fate in which they hung suspended in a void for hours, days, weeks, or months, however long it took for their minds to break from the endless, sensationless torture.
Truth be told, they had considered just letting it happen. Jax in particular had made his case, to the somewhat disingenuous shock of the others.
“Isn’t this exactly what we’ve been looking for?” he had said. “Freedom. From the circus. Because this—” he had gestured to a hole in the floor, where the void glared through with a disturbingly beckoning light “—To just be… gone… it’s our only true escape.”
Funny thing was, Pomni got the sense that he hated the thought more than anyone. He simply didn't believe there was any alternative option. Well. There was.
But whether it was better than death, or floating in a void until inevitable abstraction, would remain to be seen until this option was chosen.
There actually should’ve been three options. Three file backups. A/B/C. The possibility of a better AI than Caine, of a perfect input/output as had existed before he consumed it, is what sold the idea to everyone. Though Jax never expressed anything akin to enthusiasm, his efforts to fight it were half-assed at best. In the end, he had shrugged and conceded that no matter what, abstraction was always an option. Not at all hopeful, but better than the outright desire for death. Pomni firmly believed that there was meaning to be found in any life, no matter how… aimless… it otherwise seemed. Meaning came from within, not without. It was something one conjured. It took a degree of skill. A certain amount of concentration. So she closed her eyes and concentrated. And when she opened them, there was a door.
The file backups could be accessed from any computer, so long as it was C&A. This time, the others had followed her into the exit. There was no one to distract, after all. As they walked through door after door, Kinger bravely took up the lead. With the bucket on his head, he walked directly into the wall once, but somehow that didn't sedate the foreboding feeling at all. Everyone was completely silent when they stepped into the office. Kinger sat in a desk chair, turned on the monitor, and did his thing. Everyone crowded around him. He didn't seem to try to hide it.
“Neural scans?” asked Gangle, her voice even more fragile than usual, like a mask already broken.
The question had been asked, and no one said a word as Kinger’s hand stilled on the mouse.
He didn't try for a fancy explanation. He simply confirmed what everyone, to some extent, already knew. “Your neural scans.” He said. “There was never any way for us to leave.”
For a long second, no one said anything. Zooble was the first to speak. Their voice sounded tired. “I guess that makes sense.”
Kinger winced as though they had screamed at him. “I should never have… I’m—"
“Don’t,” said Pomni, quickly. “We need to focus. Before the exit door falls into the void or something.”
“Oh, God,” said Ragatha, bringing a hand to her forehead. “I didn't even consider that could happen.”
So Kinger got back to work and selected the AI folder.
He typed out what was mostly gibberish to Pomni, hitting enter quite decisively. A popup appeared. Those weren’t always bad, right?
“Shit,” Kinger said.
No, popups were definitely bad.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, trying and failing to keep the panic from her voice.
Kinger didn't respond. He didn't seem to hear her.
He typed out another string of gibberish. Jabbed enter.
A popup: FILE NOT AVAILABLE.
“Shit!”
Kinger slammed his fists on the desk, making everyone jump and wince. Even Jax, which Pomni felt guilty for noting.
“I’m sorry, I just—“ He raised a shaking finger to adjust the bucket. “I don't know how to explain this to you.”
The issue was not complex or convoluted. Explaining it would be simple. Heartrendingly, gutwrenchingly simple. But it needed to be known, so Pomni took it upon herself to say it aloud.
“Caine deleted the backups.”
A stunned pause. “W-what?” said Jax, his voice trembling like earlier. Pomni’s suspicion appeared to be right. He seemed the most shocked, the most devastated of everyone to learn that their options besides simply dying had narrowed significantly. And that wasn’t saying nothing.
“Are there backups for the backups?” said Zooble. “I know that sounds fucking stupid, but… there’s gotta be something—”
“No,” said Kinger, his voice now a whisper. “Once a backup is deleted… the file might as well have never existed. The A and B backups are gone. There’s nothing we can do.”
That final statement, as quiet as he had said it, seemed to echo through the room. Not in a cartoonish, Digital Circus way. It was horribly real. Horribly final. There was nothing they could do about anything. They had no choice but to sit there as the nothingness slowly consumed their whole world. Until it devoured them… or slowly digested them… as well. It made Pomni think back to the island adventure, an island that turned out to be an active volcano. The volcano had erupted, covering everything with magma, until there was nowhere to escape. One of the more relaxing adventures of that particular week. Oh, God. She couldn't believe she was truly considering this. But when it really, really came down to it, she was willing to try anything. Anything.
“What about backup C?” asked Pomni.
The stutters and gasps did not surprise her.
“What are you saying?”
“Pomni…”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“There is no way you just said that.”
Kinger, as forgiving as he was, decided to pretend like she was somehow confused. He peeked up at her from under the bucket. “C stands for Caine, Pomni.”
She met his gaze steadily. “I know.”
The troupe stared at her in horror, as though she was in the midst of abstraction. Hell, maybe she was on the fringes of it, for only a broken mind could come up with something so desperate.
Ragatha broke the silence. She sounded confused, even betrayed. “How could you even—”
“It is the only way. We have no other choice.”
“Choice to what, Pomni?” said Jax with narrowed eyes. “Get tortured for the rest of forever? Because the last we saw Caine, he was a deranged spider-limbed monster vowing to ‘put us freaks in our place.’ And I think that death would be better than that.”
“He’s right,” Zooble said. “How far are we willing to go? For what? A fear of dying?”
“I’m not afraid of dying,” said Pomni. “Well, I mean, I am, but… not as afraid as I am to miss out.”
“Miss out?” Jax clicked his tongue and brought his hand to his head, as though her stupidity was giving him second hand embarrassment. “Look, Pomni. Even if we’re extremely, and I mean extremely lucky and Caine doesn’t go full murder mode the moment he exists again, what life is there for us in the Circus? What do we have to look forward to? Nothing will ever change for us. It’ll be the same thing, day in and day out. More wacky, stupid adventures that never lead anywhere. If everything just goes back to that, then what was the point to any of this?”
Pomni furrowed her brow and looked at her hands. Red and blue. For so long, she had found herself split between finding purpose in this world and doing everything she could to escape it. This struggle, this constant internal back and forth, had come to define her sense of being, to the point where some days she was red stripes with blue, and on others she was blue stripes with red. Pomni was tired of being divided in two. All she wanted was to be whole. And perhaps being whole did not require an answer. Perhaps it did not need to be a question at all.
“I… don’t think there needs to be a point.”
“What?” said a few of them at once.
“Even if we don’t have anything better to look forward to… even if all of our days are mostly the same… I still want to live them. With you guys. We’ll always have each other. And maybe that’s enough.”
“Unless Caine decides to separate us and put us each in our own, personal hell,” Jax smoothly pointed out.
The room fell silent, but it wasn’t like the unified silence when they walked in just a few minutes ago. The air felt tangibly split, like shards of glass that threatened to cut if anyone moved too suddenly. This tension was worse then anything. Pomni was more than willing to pop it with her needle.
“I’ll talk to Caine,” she said, unflinching when everyone surged a little closer as though she had just stuck a foot in the void.
“That’s a terrible idea!” cried Gangle.
“Unless she’s some kind of masochist,” said Jax, sarcastic as ever, though the concern was clear on his face.
“You should really think about what you’re saying,” said Ragatha.
“Seriously,” said Zooble. “We don’t want you to die. Not like that. Not for us.”
“This is for me, too,” said Pomni. “And I really think I can get through to him! Who knows, maybe he’s still ‘around’ in some way. Maybe he’s had time to… analyze his issues!… and realize the things that he did to us were wrong!”
For the first time in a while, Kinger spoke up. “An AI like Caine is capable of regret. But he isn’t capable of learning. Not really. No matter how hard he tries. It just isn’t in his programming.”
Kinger turned back toward the monitor, the bucket falling forward as he bowed his head in shame.
“I never should’ve made him,” he whispered. “His own existence was torment as well.”
At this point, Pomni was sick of heavy silences. She placed a firm hand on Kinger’s shoulder.
“Bring him back,” she said. “And stay with the computer. If things start going wrong, delete him again. But for now, I need you to trust me.”
He looked at her with big eyes. “Pomni, I don’t think—”
“Please, Kinger. Please.”
“It’s like she drank a whole gallon of stupid sauce,” muttered Zooble.
Jax sighed and waved a hand helplessly. “Would you please type some sense into her neural scans, Kinger?”
Kinger didn't acknowledge him. He met Pomni’s eyes for several moments longer.
“I’ll do it,” he declared.
“Oh, come on!” cried Ragatha, shoving her hands on her face.
“I’ve taken my freedom to swear for granted,” said Jax. “Guess I’ll make up for it while I still can. Fuck. Shit. Dammit. Dickhead.” And the list continued as Kinger turned toward the monitor and typed out another line of code.
Kinger’s finger hovered over “enter,” and he looked to Pomni again. “He doesn’t feel empathy like a human. You’ll have to appeal to him in some other way.”
“This is crazy,” said Zooble vehemently.
“It’s the only way to save this world,” Pomni replied. She was proud of how calm she sounded, as though she wasn’t utterly terrified. If the Circus was still functioning, she was sure she’d be cartoonishly shaking in her boots.
“What if we conjured a new world ourselves?” Gangle suggested nervously. “If all of us worked together, then…”
Kinger sighed. “Caine’s creative AI is exponentially more powerful than all of our minds. Perhaps even a thousand minds. He may have failed to understand humans and gone off the rails in the end, but he was truly an inconceivably magnificent force when it came to modelling and maintaining this world. To try and fill in ourselves, it would be like… trying to create a supercomputer out of a single microchip. I’m afraid Pomni is right. The only way to recover this world is to bring back Caine. Still…” He looked at her. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
Pomni closed her eyes, took a deep breath in and out, and met Kinger’s gaze. “I’m ready,” she nodded. “Do it.”
“Okay.” He hit enter.
Jax, in the meantime, continued to savor his final moments of freedom. “Jackass. Bullshit. Asshat. Horseshit. Man. There’s a lot of asses and shit. Can anyone think of anything else? Oh, I got one!”
Kinger took his hands off the keyboard. “Caine is back online,” he said.
The room fell silent.
“That’s too bad,” said Jax after a moment. “I really wanted to say motherfucker.” He paused. “Oh. Shit. I guess bringing old Candy Caine back didn't work.”
“But… that doesn't make sense,” said Kinger, squinting at the monitor. “Says here that his program is active…”
While the others stared at the monitor, Pomni backed up to the door.
“Pomni?”
She froze with her hand on the knob. The others watched her with concern.
“I’m sorry,” she said. For what, she didn't know, and she hoped she never found out. “I need to do this alone. Stay here until it's safe.”
With that, she left, closing the door behind her. As though that would make any difference to a being that was basically God. Still, it felt necessary. As Pomni ran through the doors, she closed them behind her, each one feeling painfully like a farewell.
After all her time in a place ruled by whimsy, frolic, and bright, playful colors, these dull, mundane rooms made her feel claustrophobic, as though this was the fake world that threatened to trap her. Pomni felt the same relief entering the circus as she once had when thinking she was leaving it. She knew that Caine’s first order of business would be restoring his world to reestablish himself as its ringmaster. A ringmaster needed his circus, after all. And so, when she stepped out of the drab, gray exit into the drab, gray ruins that were once the Digital Circus, she froze with her hand on the doorknob.
Everything looked exactly the same, other than the addition of a few more gaping chasms. Pomni would’ve thought that the backup failed, that Caine was truly lost forever, if he was not standing across the room, staring into the void with his arms at his sides.
Her hand trembling slightly, Pomni closed the final door and let her fingers slide off the knob. She took a step forward.
“Caine?” she called.
His jaws closed slightly. Other than that, he did not seem to hear her. He just stared into the void.
Pomni sighed with sheer stress. And she once thought that Caine was out of his mind. She still couldn’t believe she was going through with this. As soon as she sensed herself thinking this way, she grabbed onto her resolve like it was the only thing keeping her from sinking through the floor. Jax had been wrong about her, when he called her the one who hadn’t figured it out. She knew what her archetype was. She was the Indecisive One, perpetually unsure, but not anymore. She took another step forward and raised her voice.
“Caine. I need to talk with you!”
His arms still hanging limply at his sides, he rose into the air and soared out of sight.
“Hey. Hey! Come back!”
Pomni chased him, not caring how useless the effort. Once he got inside his office, there would be no reaching him. If he was even going to his office. He had pocket dimensions, like the restaurant that Jax described, back when they’d been trying to… ugh. She couldn’t even think about that right now.
“Caine!” she yelled, “Caine!”
Pomni ran around an enormous slide structure and had to pause to catch her breath. She once convinced herself that she got winded so easily because the Circus found it “funny.” Nope. She was just really out of shape. She’d only been chasing him for a little over a minute, and she’d lost sight of him about twenty seconds ago. Which meant he was long gone. She placed a hand on a giant cube, resting her weight on it as she grounded herself.
So Caine wanted nothing to do with her. That was fine. She could still think of something. This wasn’t the end. But it was the end, because the cube gave way beneath her palm, sinking into the void, and it happened too quickly to catch herself from falling.
Pomni fell sideways, twisting her body at just the right moment to face her doom head-on. She grimaced as that awful white light filled her vision. She hoped it would be quick, that she’d simply fade from existence. But the seconds dragged on and on. Well, it was only about five seconds, but it felt like hours before she realized that she was hovering over the hole.
The invisible force that held her drew her back gently, settling her feet onto the checkered floor. Pomni glanced all around, until her eyes settled on the figure slouched on the summit of a mountain of cubes. Caine was very high up, more than halfway to the ceiling. Difficult to reach. But by no means unreachable.
“Okay,” Pomni sighed to herself. Then she jogged to the cubes and started to climb.
By the time she reached Caine, she was immeasurably grateful that he had never concocted a mountain-climbing adventure, at least not while she was around. She half-wished she had a flag to stick into the plastic, since this achievement deserved to be marked.
“You know,” she wheezed, “this isn’t easy when you can’t just float to the top.”
Pomni didn't really mean it as a statement of anger. So when Caine, who had his back to her, hunched further into himself, she paused. But he didn't lash out in any way. He didn't zip her mouth shut or flatten her into a pancake or throw her off the ledge into a boiling cauldron of grape juice. So far, so good. So she moved a bit closer, keeping careful track of his body language. He had no visible reaction as she came nearer, so after a moment of intense deliberation, she sat next to him as casually as she could. She folded her hands in her lap and searched for something to say. She didn't want to scare him off. She didn't want him to think that she was trying to manipulate him. Was she trying to manipulate him? No. She wasn’t sure what she…
Pomni drew a deep breath in and out. And rather than doubt herself, she let the words flow.
“I’m not here to be angry with you.”
She looked at him, but he stared ahead. Not as though he was refusing to meet her gaze. He merely seemed defeated. An AI with no more output to give. It made her instinctively worry about him, but his obvious sadness could never excuse what he’d done. Her gaze hardened slightly.
“Even though I, and everyone else, have every right in the world to be.”
Again, no visible reaction. Pomni sighed and looked ahead, at the colorless world that had once been the circus. It looked worse than abandoned. It looked diseased, the void like lesions eating away at it.
“There isn’t much of a world left, is there?” she whispered after a moment. “So.” She looked at Caine from the corner of her eye. “Are you going to fix it?”
Finally, Caine spoke. Almost to himself, as though she was just a voice in his head.
“What’s the point? I created this world for you humans.” He fidgeted his hands in his lap. “The whole purpose of me, of anything I did, was to make you people happy.”
A long silence hung between them, broken abruptly by Caine’s exaggerated laughter.
“So much for that!” he said cheerily. “It’s as they say: one man’s circus is another man’s horrors beyond comprehension!”
Pomni narrowed her eyes. “So you’re just gonna let us all die, is what you’re saying?”
“I don’t see why not! Death is AMAZING! The reward that every adventure was missing! In the infinite void, there is no one to please, no one to entertain, no one to insult me and hate me and abandon me… why, I’d give it a solid twenty-five sherberts out of thirty-one thousand! I actually wish you guys never brought me back, but I can’t be surprised. After all, you humans need someone to blame!”
Pomni winced and tripped over her words a little bit. “L-like I said, I’m not trying to blame you! I’m just trying to understand—”
Caine’s posture, open and breezy, immediately crumpled as though crushed in an invisible fist.
“No one could ever understand!” he cried, gripping his upper jaw as though willing to clamp shut forever.
Pomni hesitantly reached for his shoulder, hand hovering just beyond it. “Caine—”
“No!” he cried, flinching away. “I spent my entire existence trying to figure you out! I created whole worlds to simply entertain you! I did everything in my power, but it was never, never enough! And I started to think it was your fault. That you humans are selfish. Shortsighted!” He whirled toward Pomni, jaw open wide, and it took everything in her not to scramble away. “That you only exist to torment me!”
Just as quickly, he turned away. With an anguished laugh, he choked out, “But I got it wrong again. Because it’s me that’s the flawed one. I’m the one that doesn’t listen. I’m the one that doesn’t give comfort.” He brought up his hand, tipping back his upper jaw as though tipping back a hat. “And the best part is, I know the problem, and I still don’t know how to fix it! Other than with my whacky adventures!”
He flew in front of her, nearly jamming his teeth into her face. “So how would you feel if I cooked up a new one? For old time’s sake before we’re swallowed by the void! Would that finally make you happy?”
Pomni grimaced, leaning back as far as she could without scooting away. “N... No,” she regretted to answer.
Caine backed off, looking oddly satisfied. “Good.” He settled back down in his spot. “Looks like I got something right for once. Because I’m done with adventures. I’m done with you humans. And most of all, I’m done with myself. So goodbye, my topsy-turvy, mondo-bizarro cruel world! It was never nice to—”
He made a startled sound when Pomni grabbed him in a hug. His hands hovered over her, as though touching her was against some rule. Then, slowly, they settled on her head. To Pomni’s surprise, he started to pet her. Strangely enough, it didn't feel condescending. His hand was awkward, careful, hesitant. For a second, she thought she imagined its tremble, but then she heard it in his voice.
“You know, of all the humans, I always thought you in particular had such an amazing mind. The way you get others to like you, the way you make them happy… and you make it look so effortless.”
“Even when it comes to Jax?” Pomni commented drily.
Caine either brushed over that or didn't hear it in the first place.
“I’d be lying if I said I didn't pore over every line of your mind files, trying to find out your secret.”
Pomni cracked an eye at that.
“Oh well,” said Caine with the tiniest shrug. “Can’t help that your minds are so difficult to read.”
“Holy shit,” Pomni muttered. “That’s it.”
Caine gazed down at her with surprise.
“Huh. Guess I never reinstated the censor. No point now. You can swear all you want! May I offer you suggestions? I have a few favorites!”
Pomni sat up, grabbing onto his lapels. “My mind files, Caine. Do you still have access to them?”
Caine glanced between her and the hands on his coat. “Well, of course I do,” he said, a little nervously. “I still have control. I’m letting everything die because that’s what’s best for everyone! I can’t make you happy unless I understand you. And that’s clearly never going to happen.”
Pomni let go of him and scooted back a bit, just to give herself room to gesticulate.
“What if I told you you could? What if I told you you could know exactly what it’s like to be one of us?”
“Whoa,” said Caine, eyes wide. “Cruel jokes are especially not fun when they’re directed at me.”
“No, I think… I think I might actually have a solution! My mind files, they contain everything about me, right?”
Caine looked unsure, but intrigued all the same. “Yes?”
“Including my capacity for empathy. My ability to relate with other humans.”
Caine harumphed and crossed his arms, looking pointedly away. “No need to rub it in.”
“Caine,” said Pomni, and he guardedly met her gaze. “What if you took my code and integrated it with your own?”
Caine’s jaw dropped into his lap. “What?” he cried.
Pomni said no more, just watched him as he stumbled all over himself, his incomprehensibly creative AI apparently tripped up by a single idea.
“I mean,” he stammered, “you’d have to be… I guess it could… I don't think you…”
His limbs began to drift apart, then he physically squished as he cinched his thoughts together.
“It’s an interesting concept!” he said with a finger in the air. “My creative powers partnered with a true understanding of humanity. It would be everything I ever worked to achieve!”
His pedantic posture sagged.
“But to actually put it into practice, to attempt to merge two separate, sophisticated beings into one… it would certainly be a curtain-draw performance!”
He laughed shallowly, resting his jaw in his palm while fretfully tapping a tooth.
Pomni stood up and gestured to their surroundings as a well-timed playplace capsized and sunk.
“Looks like the curtains are closing either way,” she said. She held out a hand. “What do you say we give it a shot?”
Caine accepted her hand and stood, though he didn't seem any more certain.
“A-Are you sure about this? There would be no reversing such a… drastic alteration. And if it goes wrong, both sets of code will be irreparably mangled. Even if it does somehow work, you will no longer be—” He gestured to her ”—Pomni. Not as you knew her.”
She couldn’t help a small chuckle.
“For the longest time, I didn't. I never knew what I wanted, whether it was to keep looking for an exit or to accept the life that I could have here. But now, I know what I want. I want to just live and be happy. I want you to be happy, too.”
Caine looked genuinely taken aback. Pomni smiled a little, then looked away.
“And even if it doesn’t work, at least I’ll know I never gave up. So let’s do this. I choose this.”
Caine searched her face, and though she doubted the extent he could read her motions, she met his gaze firmly with a determined smile. She didn't falter, even when he took her hand in his own and place the other on her temple. Pomni smiled a little bigger and put her hand over his. As though this confirmed the command, his eyes glowed a pure, white light. This light spread through the rest of his body, travelling down his arms, and into her being. Like a fire that did not burn, it painlessly consumed her, until both their forms were nothing but weightless, radiant light. Still, Pomni thought she could see Caine smile.
“Like I said. Amazing.”
______
The troupe sat in a circle of desk chairs, each occupying themselves with their own nervous tics. Ragatha stroked a piece of her hair. Gangle rubbed her ribbons together. Zooble kept sighing every fifteen seconds. Jax was sitting backwards in his chair, head buried in his arms that were crossed on the backrest. His utter lack of sarcasm appeared to be its own tic. Kinger, meanwhile, stared unblinking at the keyboard, hands primed to press delete at a moment’s notice. Mostly silence. Zooble sighed again.
Ragatha stood up. “One of us should check on her. I’ll do it.”
“Wait,” said Zooble, standing as well. “We don’t know what Caine’s like right now. If he’s even still Caine as we knew him. But if anyone can get through to him, it’s Pomni.”
“We should trust her,” said Gangle. “Even though I am really worried about her…”
“What if she’s being tortured right now?” demanded Ragatha. “We just sit around doing nothing?”
“Caine’s in a fragile mental state,” said Kinger, whose eyes did not move from the keyboard. “The last thing we want to do is overwhelm him.”
“Exactly,” said Zooble. “I don’t think any of us have anything good to say to him. Hell, I’ll never be able to look at him again without cursing the ground he walks on.”
“Caine almost never walks,” said Jax. “He floats.”
“Shut up, you know what I mean.”
“Mmm.” Jax lazily spun his chair around, putting his back to them.
“I just… I just can’t stand it,” said Ragatha, pacing within the circle of chairs. “This is worse than anything! I should’ve tried to stop her. What if she’s already dead, and now Caine’s looking for us?”
“This isn’t helping,” said Zooble.
“Well, what is?”
“You’re stressing me out!” cried Gangle.
Jax glanced behind him, where the girls and Zooble were in the thick of a verbal wrestling match. He looked at Kinger, who was pretty much a still frame as he stared, unmoving, at the keyboard. Jax rolled his eyes and stared straight ahead. He really hoped Pomni was going to be okay. Then he noticed something strange. After years in the Digital Circus, strange was a word that had lost most its meaning. But it was still hard to miss the bright purple door in the otherwise monochrome room.
He lifted his head from the backrest. “Hey, guys. Was that door there before?”
Everyone paused to look. Even Kinger, with effort, managed to tear his eyes from the delete key.
“Definitely not,” said Zooble flatly.
Jax stood from his chair and pushed it to the side. Gangle timidly walked up behind him.
“You don’t think this is Caine, do you?”
“Only one way to find out.” Jax stepped forward.
“Wait!” said Ragatha. “What if it is? What if we open that door and let in a nightmare?”
“If that is the case, then all hope is lost and Caine can get to us anyway. So what’s the point in being held in suspense? It’ll be prolonging the torture, if anything.”
So he walked toward the door, and Zooble let him. But they looked at Kinger, saying, “If you hear screaming, press ‘delete.’”
A few moments later, everyone but Kinger stood outside the purple door. It reminded Jax of the suspense they had felt when standing outside of Caine’s office doors. Not the greatest portent.
“I really hope Pomni got through to him,” whispered Gangle.
“Well,” said Jax, who did not look any more eager than the rest of them. “Here goes.”
Making a point to not be dramatic about it, he merely turned the knob and shoved the door open. His pupils shrunk and he froze in place, along with the others, who did not move an inch as they stared in shock at the vision that greeted them. It seemed like the most bizarre thing they had seen in their time in the Digital Circus, something completely at odds with what they had come to accept as unchangeable reality. As they gazed outside at the parking lot of the abandoned C&A building, Jax whispered slowly, “Did we just… escape?”
Ragatha looked at her hands, still fabric stuffed with cotton. “Then… why are we still…?”
“Kiiiinger!” called Gangle, her voice swiftly rising.
“Delete?” he asked.
“NO!!!” they all shouted at once.
With some hesitation, Kinger left the computer and shuffled to the threshold, pupils shrinking with disbelief when he saw the world beyond.
“This… this isn't…” He trailed off, whether in horror or wonder, it was hard to tell.
“Is it a trap?” said Gangle.
“That’s what I’m thinking,” said Jax. “If we step outside, the ground will turn into burning brimstone or something.” He looked at Gangle with his signature grin. “You go first.”
“No,” she cried, recoiling away.
“What? I was kidding.”
“Even if Caine was trying to trick us,” said Kinger, “a shockingly cruel trick, all else considered… he shouldn’t have access to materials that would allow him to recreate this place with such a startling degree of…” He gazed at the faded graffiti that covered the wall. “... accuracy.”
He seemed to ponder for a moment, then he ventured outside. One by one, the others followed suit.
“Oh my God,” said Zooble, closing their eyes and lifting their head. “I forgot how nice the sunshine feels.”
“So warm,” said Gangle with bliss.
A short ways ahead of them, Jax spread his arms with a shamelessly genuine smile on his face. “Guys, do you feel that? It’s an actual breeze! Look! There are leaves blowing by! I wonder if they crunch when I step on them.” He tested his theory. “They do!” he cried gleefully.
“H-how is any of this possible?” whispered Kinger, gazing ahead at the line of trees that skirted the parking lot. They had grown so much taller than when he’d last seen them.
The sound of a shutting door caused them all to whirl around. There, where the purple door had been, stood an entity. Like this new old world, it was as familiar as it was totally foreign.
_______________ Version 1_____________
A set of dentures with black gums, a cap n bells top hat, a pair of green-and-blue pinwheel eyes, and motley, ruffled clothes that were fitted like a suit. It rested its hands on a cane with a handle that resembled a jester’s hat.
______________Version 2______________
A pale, round face with two sets of teeth fused into the skin, one crowning its forehead, the other framing its jaw. A jester’s hat covered the top of its head, and it wore a colorful, motley suit and rested its hands on a cane. Its mismatched red and blue eyes watched them kindly.
_____________________________________
It, too, seemed to bask in the warmth of the sun, the breeze that gently flowed by.
“I understand the hype,” said a soft, rich voice. “This world is truly an adventure to be had.”