Chapter Text
Now that all that's over with, Pomni can focus on fixing the circus again. The glitching has spread pretty far at this point, there won't be anything left down here to search before long.
Gotta keep looking for Caine.
She walks around the edge of the tent, making sure to watch where she's putting her feet. She comes up along the wall filled with doorways. Might as well start checking in some of these doors. Even though they bring up unpleasant memories of the “Exit” she can't leave any stone unturned. Especially when those stones are vanishing out of existence all around her.
She opens up the first door and is met with a completely black void.
Of course.
Why not.
She closes it.
The familiar sense of hopelessness begins eating away at her insides.
Maybe part of her volunteered to search down here because she knows Caine won't actually be here. She's looked for him here before and he wasn't there. Honestly she'd pick risking a fall into the cellar any day over dealing with Caine.
Hopefully one of the others are able to find him. At the very least she needs to keep an eye out for–
“Oh! Hello Pomni!”
Pomni jumps, feeling her body stretch abnormally. She whips her head around, finding the chess piece standing inches away from her.
“Kinger!” She shouts.
He stares back at her, completely wall-eyed. “Have you seen my flower pots?”
“Umm… no?” Pomni says hesitantly. “Listen, you really shouldn't be down here. You know, with the whole…” She points over her shoulder.
His gaze followers her finger, soaking in the display of static and glitches. Suddenly his eyes widen and he places his disembodied hands on his head in fear. “Oh God! Does this mean we lost the war against the pesticides!?”
“...”
“What.”
Pomni's had a lot more patience with the chess piece since their time in Hell together, but there are moments she has to wonder if that whole day was a hallucination.
Pomni shakes her head to clear it. “Actually, nevermind. You should head up the stairs and wait somewhere safe. I’ll stay here and…” she hesitates, glancing at the long line of doors. “...keep looking for Caine, I guess.”
“You're looking for Caine?” Kinger asks.
“Yeah, but I… don't really think I'll find him.”
“I know how to find him!”
She looks at him disbelievingly. “Do you now?”
“Yes!” Kinger responds excitedly.
He walks up to the door she'd just closed, grabbing the handle. Pomni feels her brows lower on her face.
“Kinger, I already looked in there.”
He looks back, head tilted in confusion. “I'm not looking anywhere.”
“Then what are you–”
He opens the door, and Pomni expects to see the same empty void. Only it's not there. She doesn't have a good view from this angle, but there's a soft light illuminating what looks like a tall shelf holding a bunch of boxes and some loose paper.
Pomni gapes in shock.
“Wha– Bu– How did you–?”
But Kinger has already walked away, heading towards the stairs.
??? Okay?? That's a thing now, apparently? Or, has that always been a thing? This place is so hard to keep track of.
Nothing left to do but see what's inside.
Pomni walks forward until she’s standing in the doorway. The inside of the room is filled with more shelves arranged in vertical rows. They’re stacked with boxes. In fact, there are so many boxes in here there’s even a few piles on the floor next to the shelves. Most of them have black writing on the outside, and on closer inspection Pomni realizes it’s all written in 1’s and 0’s.
She looks down the row at the source of light.
There, curled up on the floor, is Caine.
Oh thank FUCK. Now she can be done with this nightmare and move onto the next.
Pomni steps inside and begins to walk towards him. His teeth are closed, something she doesn’t see him do very often. He’s also sitting on the floor, which is something he’s never done. Does this have something to do with the glitching?
She stops a few feet away. He still hasn’t noticed she’s here. Now that she’s closer, she can see that he’s shaking. What was it Zooble said? Someone just has to distract him?
“Um… Caine?”
He jumps, jaws snapping open to reveal his multi-colored eyes.
They’re filled with tears.
Okay.
Wasn’t expecting that.
His pupils narrow in fear. “P– Pomni…”
They stare at each other in equal surprise. Pomni can feel her mouth hanging open as she looks down at him. Since when was Caine even capable of feeling sad? It’s unnerving to see. Everything about this feels wrong, like realizing the shirt you were trying to put on is actually a pair of pants.
Her instinctual dislike towards him wants to be annoyed she’s the one who has to deal with this. Caine has been nothing but a pain since she’s got here, constantly disregarding her feelings and putting her through tortuous adventures, not to mention what he did to Gummigoo. Plus he’s generally loud, annoying, and blatantly egotistical. Pomni has felt nothing but disdain towards the floating dentures any time he’s around.
But it’s hard to feel that right now. Not when he’s sitting in front of her crying and scared.
Unsure of what to do with her body, she hovers awkwardly.
“Are you… like… okay?”
He quickly wipes away the tears as if he just remembered they were there. When he looks at her again, his teeth are narrowed around his eyes in a sort of pained expression.
Caine laughs, clearly trying to come across as genuine, but missing the mark by a mile. “Haha, of course I am! Nothing to worry about here!”
He tries for his usual over-the-top-waving-his-silly-arms-around but it looks more like he's begging her for something.
Well he’s certainly distracted. Is that it? Is the circus fixed? Pomni glances over her shoulder out the door. In the distance, the glitching continues. Didn’t Zooble say this would be easy?
“Uh– wait!” She says frantically just as he starts to try getting up. God, hasn’t she done enough of this today? And why is she always the one getting stuck with the self-aware AI? “Is there anything you wanted to… talk about?”
He looks puzzled by the question, still struggling to keep up the cheery persona. “What would we have to talk about?”
“Um, well,” Pomni starts, “Maybe we could start with what you were doing in here?”
At that, Caine looks away.
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” he says quieter than she’s ever heard him.
She watches his fingers twitch against the carpet. “Sure, but… Maybe it’ll make you feel better?”
He doesn’t say anything.
She takes another cautious step towards him. “Caine?”
He slowly turns back to look at her. His upper set of teeth hang low over his eyes, which now have small stress lines under them.
“Why do you care?”
The utter defeat in his voice has Pomni taken aback. Even when it was obviously fake before, it’s strange to hear him give up on the showman voice entirely.
Now doesn’t feel like a good time to mention the entire circus deteriorating right outside the door.
“I guess I just… Don’t want you to feel bad.” It sounds incredibly lame now that she’s said it out loud, but it is true. Mostly.
Caine looks like he might start crying again. A few tears start to form, and he quickly shuts his teeth and turns away. He wipes at them as discreetly as he can manage while faced the other way.
Pomni joins him on the floor.
She keeps a distance between them, and doesn’t interrupt his attempt at dignity.
Once he’s calmed himself down a little, he brings his knees up to his chest and places his hands on them. He makes a few aborted attempts to start saying something, but seems unable to find the right words.
Pomni decides to put him out of his misery and ask the obvious question.
“Does it have to do with us skipping the adventure today?”
Caine visibly tenses before nodding.
“Listen… I know they mean a lot to you, but we're people,” she explains gently. “And we don't like to just be… thrown into some horror mystery story.”
At that, she gets an animated response. He throws his arms out, a look of absolute torment in his eyes, and cries: “Why not??”
Pomni stares back at him for a few moments.
Oh.
He's being serious.
“W– Well, um,” Where does she even start? “I guess it's nice to feel like we're in control of our lives? In the real world, we’re pretty used to making our own decisions.”
Caine looks absolutely baffled by this. “Isn’t that why you all came here!? To stop making decisions?”
This guy confuses her more by the second. How can he understand the concept of escapism but not self-autonomy?
“Well, none of us really came here on purpose,” she explains patiently. “Or at least we didn’t mean to get stuck here. The game is just a little… Broken.” She smiles uncomfortably, making a pinching motion with her fingers to emphasize the little.
Caine stares blankly at her for several seconds.
He then brings up his hands and presses them against his disembodied eyes, squishing them together.
“I’m broken?!” he wails in agony.
Pomni’s face falls.
Shitshitshit–
The stutter and buzz of the glitching have a sudden upsurge in intensity. The door leading out into the circus spasms out of existence for several seconds.
“Oh– No! Nonono, I didn’t mean it like that, uhh…” She wracks her brain for what to say. “What I meant to say is that it’s not your fault! That we’re stuck here, that is. I think everyone here knows you don’t have control over that.”
He lets go of his eyes, choosing to grab at the top of his upper jaw instead. “But that’s my job, Pomni! I’m in charge of the happiness and wellbeing of every human who comes here! If something is making you all unhappy, it’s my job to fix it! How am I supposed to fix myself?!”
Pomni thinks before responding this time. “Don’t you think you’re putting a little too much pressure on yourself? I mean, nobody’s perfect. There are plenty of other things you can do here that will make everyone happier.”
Caine curls further in on himself, switching from extreme hysteria to deep depression. “No one will ever be happy here as long as I’m in charge. It’s like you said, I'm broken. I might as well just give up.” He lets out a sob, closing his mouth and holding it in his hands. A few tears slip between his teeth and drip down his jaw.
Panic begins to set in where her stomach would be. The glitching is right outside the door now and hasn’t went away, which means if she can’t get him to calm down soon there won’t be enough circus left for her to try.
“There’s no reason to give up,” Pomni reassures. She very slowly and awkwardly reaches out to put a comforting hand on his back. It doesn’t seem to have any effect, but it feels like the right thing to do. “You know, all you really need to do is let us have a bit more agency, and I’m sure everyone here would be a lot happier. You could even start with the suggestion box…?” She cautiously proposes the idea.
Caine releases a sound somewhere between a cry and laugh. His body unfurls just enough to crack open his eyes, a stream of tears still flowing down his lower jaw. “You all like the suggestion box because my adventures aren’t good enough. I know it would make you happy if I took your suggestions but…” He cuts himself off as though the next sentence physically pains him. “I– … I want you to like mine. I just… I want to be the reason you all smile. It doesn’t feel the same if it’s because of something I didn’t make.”
He hugs himself tighter, looking away in shame. “I suppose that’s just another part of being broken.”
Pomni can’t help but be moved by his honesty. For the first time, it feels like they have some common ground where she can actually understand exactly how he feels.
She pulls her hand away and smiles softly at him. “Actually, I think that’s a pretty human emotion.”
He snaps back to look at her, switching suddenly to intense agitation. “I’m not supposed to have those! These… ‘human emotions’ are getting in the way of my ability to do my job!”
“That’s… Also a pretty human emotion,” Pomni snorts.
Caine points at her like he wants to rebuttal, but comes up short. Realizing he has no counter-argument, he groans loudly and throws his hands up before folding them over his chest.
Pomni laughs to herself at the dramatic display, for once finding his over-the-top antics slightly amusing. Maybe it’s just because he feels a little more grounded in humanity to her now, but who really knows.
The pair settle into a more or less comfortable silence.
Pomni lets her head rest against the wall. The glitching has subsided, although it’s difficult to gauge exactly how much considering she can no longer see any of it. So at the very least things have gotten better.
Caine is no longer crying, but his body language suggests his mind is still in unfavorable places. A white glove taps rapidly over his red suit. As if bothered by the lack of fidgetable items, he reaches up and takes off his top hat. He runs a hand across the black rim, lost in thought.
“Is it…” He starts to ask, but loses the courage. Trying to collect himself, he stops focusing on the hat and turns to look at her. “Is it also a human emotion that part of me… doesn’t really want any of you to leave?”
The question has her taken aback.
“What?”
He quickly explains himself. “It’s just that– I was made to entertain humans. It’s… my whole reason for existing. So without any of you, I– I wouldn’t really…”
He looks off into the distance.
“My existence wouldn't have a meaning.”
That’s something she hadn’t really considered before. She’s spent so much time thinking of ways to escape and imagining what she would do once free, she never thought about what would happen to Caine. Well, that’s not entirely true. She did on multiple occasions imagine smashing the computer in with a baseball bat if she ever got out. Those late-night barbaric revenge thoughts can get pretty intense sometimes.
But now, after seeing him like this and knowing he’s capable of complex emotions, she feels guilty for wishing that on him. Not guilty enough that she wouldn’t still jump on the opportunity to leave, but maybe no smashing involved.
That is a pretty terrifying prospect though, from his perspective. Losing your entire purpose for life as well as everyone you’ve ever known wouldn’t exactly be something to look forward to. He’d basically have the same fate as them.
“I don’t think it’s wrong to feel that way,” Pomni says gently. “As long as you aren’t hurting anyone because of it, that’s a totally normal thing to feel.”
Caine looks at her with big sad eyes, still holding onto his hat.
“Really?”
Not quite the response she was expecting.
“Umm… Yeah?” She replies hesitantly, not entirely sure what he wants her to say.
Thankfully he seems satisfied with her response, losing most of the tension in his shoulders and relaxing back into the wall.
Pomni keeps thinking about what he said.
She knows what it’s like to feel meaningless. It’s part of the whole reason she ended up in this circus.
After she graduated from college, her life was starting to feel stagnant. Her brain itched for something more out of life besides sitting behind a desk sifting through numbers. It paid well, but ultimately felt like it could never fully satisfy her. Then, one day while scrolling through YouTube, she found a video of a guy exploring an abandoned hospital. It had been so long since she’d broken any rules, and she quickly found herself enticed by the thrill of sneaking through backdoors and finding cool places that people usually aren’t allowed into. So, one month later, she went out.
It was even better than she had imagined. There was this freedom to it she never felt anywhere else, to be surrounded by old and forgotten things. There were no rules, no expectations, just her and a camera doing whatever she wanted.
She misses it. She can still remember the exact moment she found the computer she now lives in. It was confusing and exciting all at once. In the year or so since she’d started exploring these places, she had never seen an entire computer left behind. Especially not one that was still on. She figured it must have been broken since the only thing on screen was a white void.
When she noticed the headphones, her first thought was that they were way too nice for no one to have snagged by now. Her second thought was wondering why they had a caution sticker on them. Her third was that she should try them on.
Not her brightest moment.
Still, it seems odd. Why was the game left there? It seems to be fully functional, besides the obvious. Why just… give up? Why keep it running at all?
“Can I… ask you something?” Pomni says.
Caine nods. He’s no longer fidgeting restlessly, and is now absently holding his top hat in his hand as he rests it on a propped up knee.
“Why were you alone? Out there, I mean,” she points upwards, hoping the meaning of the gesture gets across. “Shouldn’t someone have been… I don’t know, taking care of you?”
He finches back at the question, a pained expression on his face.
Realizing she’d been too blunt about it, she rushes to fix it. “I– I’m sorry,” Pomni stumbles over her words. “I didn’t mean to make y– er– You don’t have to answer that. Sorry.”
Ashamed, she can’t bring herself to look at him. God, why did she have to say it like that?
There’s a beat of silence before Caine sighs.
“So it is true.”
? Huh?
Pomni looks back at him. “What?”
He’s staring down at his hat, absently running his thumb across the rim. There’s a deeply upset look somewhere in his eyes, but for once he remains calm. As if this is something he’s recently come to accept. “There used to be humans out there. They would… talk to me. Give me instructions and such. They were my developers.”
He pauses. The tension in his voice becomes much clearer as he says the next part. “They… stopped communicating with me some time ago. Not long after the first human came here. I assume it had to do with the whole exit problem, but… they never updated me on anything. One day they were just… gone.”
Pomni frowns.
She supposes it makes sense, in a way. If someone was already trapped in the game, they wouldn’t want to risk unplugging it or turning it off if they were forced to leave. But still, to just… abandon it all? Not only the human but whoever made this place must have known Caine was an extremely advanced AI. To leave him there to rot just seems cruel.
“I’m… sorry that happened to you. It wasn’t right for them to leave you behind like that.”
He turns to face her, smiling softly. “Thank you, Pomni.”
Pomni returns the gesture. “But on the bright side, now you don’t have to meet anyone’s expectations anymore. You can kinda just… do whatever you want.”
Caine raises the section of teeth above one of his eyes to form a confused expression. “Which would be… What exactly?”
“I don’t know. Whatever feels right.”
“Creating adventures feels right.”
Pomni sighs, starting to get annoyed. “Anything besides adventures.”
A set of words that seem to be completely unfamiliar to the Ringmaster. His eyes start slowly drifting in two different directions, disassociating from the conversation entirely.
“You know what? We’ll figure that part out later,” she says with finality. Getting her feet back beneath her, Pomni rises from the floor. The door leading back to the circus is still left slightly ajar, the bright light in harsh contrast to the dingy storage room.
She turns back to Caine, who watches her closely but doesn’t move to get up. Pomni offers him a hand. He startles at the gesture, making an aborted attempt to take it before hesitating. After a few seconds of uncertain hovering, he places his hand in hers. She helps pull him to his feet.
It’s the first time she’s ever seen him stand. It’s clear he isn’t entirely used to it, given his awkwardly wide stance and tense arms. He stares downward for a long moment, to the point Pomni starts to question if he even knows how to walk.
In the end, he decides on summoning his baton, placing it on the ground next to him to use as a sort of walking cane. Next, he sets his top hat back where it belongs, then smooths out the imperfections in his tuxedo shirt as if there were any to begin with. Seeming a little more confident in himself, he looks back at Pomni.
She smiles, gesturing towards the door. “Come on. Let’s get back to the circus.”
A shadow of fear comes over him. His fingers tap against the gold ball of his baton.
“I– I don’t… What about the others? Aren’t they…”
“Don’t worry about that,” Pomni interrupts. “I’ll have your back.”
Caine softens at her reassurances. He sucks in a breath, steeling himself as he takes his first step. His movements are slightly clumsy, but he makes it to her side without issue. She gestures him along, gradually traveling past the crowded boxes towering over the pair.
Reaching their destination, Pomni places a hand on the lever.
“You ready to start living like one of us?” She asks.
Caine’s eyes reflect the light from outside. He stares into it with a mixed sense of unease and rejuvenation.
The door opens.