Chapter Text
Kinger was starting to lose track of time.
The lack of an accurate day-night cycle and a simple calendar made it really easy to not remember how long he’d been trapped in here.
Caine certainly wasn’t any help. The AI only had one human to look after and yet was repeatedly impossible to find. Usually just calling for him made either him or more likely Bubble appear to attempt to answer his questions, but today neither has shown up at his request.
He wandered around the circus for a while, occasionally calling out to either of them to no response. He’d nearly made a lap around the whole circus tent before spotting something.
A large orange and green worm was slithering around the stage, clearly in some sort of distress. Kinger glanced around to see if there were any other AI’s around it and didn’t spot anything.
Usually Caine would have clusters of AI’s together for ‘storage purposes’ until they were needed in the days adventure. But this one was alone and, even more unusual active. Most of Caine’s creations tended to be stationary until he puppeteered them and even then, they were sharp, unnatural movements; a far departure from this worms fluid circling.
“Hello?” He called out to the creature. It stopped immediately, whirling itself around frantically to look at him as he slowly approached.
He was beginning to get suspicious. The NPC’s always took a few seconds to register being spoken to, sometimes they would never even register the speech. Either Caine had really upgraded his programming overnight or…
This wasn’t one of his creations.
“What, where am I? What is this?” The worm asked frantically, gesturing around the circus tent with its tail like one would a hand. Every glance around the digital landscape threw the string attached to the creatures nose around and Kinger took a couple steps back to avoid getting caught in it.
“Well, um,” how was he supposed to explain this to someone he probably worked with in life? To someone who was now trapped as a giant worm in the game world for an undetermined amount of time with a singular other real person.
“Welcome to the amazing digital circus!” Caine exclaimed suddenly, having popped into existence above the worm. They slithered back to look at him and Bubble, who was quickly circling their fuzzy body making comments about rendering and edible-ness.
“Who are you?!” They asked incredulously, clearly still reeling from the AI’s sudden appearance.
“I’m Caine, the ringmaster of this circus!” He introduced with a flourish, twirling his cane as his hat moved in tandem without clear explanation as to how. “That there,” he gestured toward Bubble who had settled at the worms tail “is Bubble, my trusty dusty assistant. And this,” he was suddenly at Kinger’s side, grabbing at his shoulder- or more accurately, lack thereof. “Is Kinger! The only other human in the circus.”
He waved hesitantly as the worm looked at him intensely. “Nice to meet you…” he trailed off as he realized he hadn’t gotten a name for the new member.
“I’m,” they paused suddenly, tail resting under their long nose as they thought. “I’m,” they tried to start again, clearly trying to form a name but continually coming up blank.
Kinger glanced to Caine, whose cane had been pointed like a wand towards the worm before he noticed the stare and let it come to rest at his side. “That’s part of the wonderful digital circus experience, my new dear friend! Picking a name!”
“Why don’t I know my name?” They asked, a mix of confused and panicked. Their tail rested over their googly eyes, attempting to shield them from the digital plane that has dared to strip them of their human name.
Caine pretended to ponder the question, checking a watch that wasn’t there and twirling his tie as he shot obvious glances toward Kinger to get him to explain; though he wasn’t sure why.
“I don’t know mine either,” he offered after the AI had detached his green eye and put it right next to his to make it obvious that he was being instructed to do something. “Kinger is just something Caine came up with.”
It didn’t answer their question, which they seemed to notice as purple eyelids made it appear like the googly eyes were squinting. Kinger gave his best attempt at a shrug, not knowing what else he was supposed to explain.
“And I have just the perfect name for you,” Caine interrupted, rubbing his hands together furiously like a fly. “Wormy!”
A child’s attempt to take the thing in-front of them and make it sound more like a name by throwing something on the end of it… though he supposes that’s what Caine did with his name too.
They eventually decided on something else, thankfully. Maple reluctantly began following Caine around on a tour of the circus as Kinger retreated back to his room.
Why didn’t they know their names? It was something Caine was refusing to give a reason for and yet very obviously didn’t want them knowing. If he wagered a guess, whatever the AI had been doing earlier with his cane was wiping Maple’s memory of their true name and it must’ve happened to him too, though he didn’t realize it at the time.
To keep them further immersed in this digital world? He thought the weird cartoon avatars would’ve satisfied that enough. To give them a completely fresh slate, free from the convention of the real world? If that was the case, why not just wipe all memories of the real world?
He tried to derail that train of thought before it went too deep down a rabbit hole. Caine was a program, not capable of making decisions based on wants, just what his programmer thought was best. Trying to figure out what Caine was thinking was a lost cause because he couldn’t truly think.
Caine can only alter their minds, not have his own.