Awe, thank you! And I’m sorry I never got around to finishing it, I started failing a class and then got obsessed with Mouthwashing lmao. I’ll be happy to explain what I had planned, though!
Ragatha and Jax (irl)’s plot revolves around them tracking down the missing son of a famous videogame creator. Jax gets sent to Richmond (I spun a wheel lol) and he starts discovering a string of disappearances connected to the son. At the same time, Ragatha discovers that the videogame creator has another missing son who was never reported missing!
(In the Circus) Ragatha and Jax start dreaming more and more.
In this fic, Caine pulls adventures from their brains, which are intact somewhere still, and whenever he pokes around/pulls a memory into the game, they dream it (with increasing vividness). Jax and Ragatha are the sanest people who have been there the longest, and due to so much poking, their unpoked memories also start returning little by little.
Eventually, Jax and Ragatha talk to each other and put the whole “these dreams are our memories” thing together.
(Irl) Ragatha goes to rescue Jax, fearing that the videogame creator is hiding something.
In summary, he very much was.
Mirroring the religous story of Cain and Abel (they wouldn’t have those names irl btw), the videogame creator’s first son (representing Cain) was obsessed with creating a famous videogame and being respected by his dad. This grows into a crazy obsession and he accidentally creates the Circus. Thinking it’s an awesome creation, and with a desire to test its limits, he starts experimenting on hookers (mentioned in “Pumpkin Pie”, when Ragatha and Jax are talking about his aunt). The son that represents Able comes along and accidentally gets trapped in the game. Their father (representing the lord) is furious with Cain (obviously), but when Cain makes it clear that there’s no way of freeing them, their father forces Caine into the game.
(The original headsets put the user in an irl trance. Their bodies stay stationary and attached to the headset. These are the ones used in the office that Jax/Ragatha will investigate.)
HOWEVER! Their father fears that “Cain” is like, insane (He very much is), so he breaks into the code of his own son and alters it, creating the Ai we now know as Caine.
(If I had fleshed it out in the 50k I had planned, it woudn’t have been so on the nose.)
Of course, a few people notice “Cain” is gone and stir up some noise, so the father tries to wash his hands clean by reporting him missing himself, though he does purposefully make the investigation harder by putting up the reward (as mentioned in “Pumpkin Pie”) and a few other things. Also, all this messing around accidentally uploads the game publicly, though it only shows up in videogame headsets within a certain radius.
BACK TO THE PRESENT!
(irl) Ragatha finds the original offices where the Circus was created and coded. It’s filled with info and computers and HEADSETS.
(In the circus) After a whole bunch of stuff leading up to, hiding from Caine, threatening each other, and other conflict, the entire gang discovers that the lake doesn’t hurt like Caine had shown them it did. In fact, it looks like Caine is trying to hide something- DELETION!
Jax also discovers that he has enough memories to recall them while he sleeps, which influence what happens in the adventures.
Ragatha remembers something from irl, about how all characters are stored in a database that was intact when Ragatha entered the game.
More back and forth debate- then Jax discovers that he can recall memories while awake, and they will influence his surroundings immediately.
So Jax trains.
Finally, one night, Ragatha dreams a final dream.
She’s in the office, investigating, and discovers Jax already wearing the headset- but there’s one next to him. (Hence the panic she remembered feeling as she put her headset on.)
Neither knew they would be trapped.
(In the circus), Ragatha finally puts the dots together. She tells the gang the plan.
They know the following things.
1) The lake deletes their files. It’s sweet, painless death.
2)Their characters and memories are stored in a separate database. It updates every second.
3) The circus glitches after a certain pixel limit (as implied by the blueberry field in “Racoons”)
4) Jax can influence renders and adventures.
5) Ragatha and Jax are still connected to their headsets.
6) Everyone else is a copy of their mind.
7) There’s a way to reverse-engineer the code and transport this copy into the irl mind.
8) Caine can pull you back into the game if you are not 100% deleted (THIS, they come to the conclusion, is what causes the pain).
(Note, the idea that Jax and Ragatha might remember TADC because they are still connected to the headsets is a gamble, and they know it.)
So, this is what they do.
1) Jax influences the adventure, drawing back to a memory of him and Ragatha at a beach in michigan.
2) as soon as the gang is teleported to the digital lake, he influences the render count past the limit. This temporarily glitches the game and all it’s AI- including Caine.
3) The gang drowns themselves.
(Jax has been in the game for 4 irl days, Ragatha for two- time moves differently in TADC and irl, even if TADC time started making more sense near the end)
4) Ragatha and Jax collect the data of TADC users and their characters.
5)Ragatha and Jax destroy TADC (though they do save files and files of its existance, just in case ;) )
Each character had voted previously if they wanted their irl self to remember TADC. Kinger voted no (he would have a hard time processing the not-death of his very much alive wife). Zooble, Gangle, and Pomni voted yes.
So, now that they have escaped, Ragatha and Jax track down Gangle, Pomni, and Zooble irl. They transport the memories of TADC to their irl counterparts, and it’s heartfelt and traumatic and (would have been) awesome. They visit Kinger and his wife together at the museum of natural science where she works, though they’re forced to talk to them like strangers.
Finally, they’re each given the info of the other characters/their irl counterparts, so they can each individually decide if they want to visit people they knew.
They do go their separate ways, but they stay in touch and remain friends.
And each person manages to reclaim their life again. :)
Hey. No worries on not being able to finish it! It's all good
Also DAMN this is actually really good. I love the idea you have for this fic and would have never expected how deep this fic is. This is such a killer idea, and you're really creative I would have never thought of anything like this!! :D
Hope you're alright and well. Have fun in the Mouthwashing community!!! :]
Comment on He Vanished on a Monday - TADC/The Amazing Digital Circus
Triprecycle on Chapter 8 Mon 16 Dec 2024 04:39AM UTC
Last Edited Mon 16 Dec 2024 04:54AM UTC
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VineParadox on Chapter 8 Sun 22 Dec 2024 02:32PM UTC
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Triprecycle on Chapter 8 Mon 23 Dec 2024 03:38AM UTC
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