Chapter Text
Darkness. Weightlessness. And the drone of computer fans and hard drive disks. This… this should feel like home, right? Infinite black void. Space to create. And yet… no. None of that. It is tight, and constricted, and simultaneous hot and cold… like our senses were… confused. And then a smack of light and sound and wind and air and laughter and tears. A lonely birthday in a small backyard and swing. It shifts, in the same thunderous fury of sensation. An awkward conversation in a schoolyard. Other children looking on… two of them, arguing. We reach in to do… something. And then… the other two children fight. Shift. A classroom. Different feel. Older feel. The sensation of… confusion. And… joy. Focused on… the teacher? We raise our hand and… Shift. Dark… but different this time. An old building. A wobbling, jittering flashlight is lighting the way. Turning. Twisting. Exploring. And then… someone jumps out. Then they reveal themselves from the scary mask they wore. They help us up, and…
-=-
Caine bolted awake. "Wowie, what a SUPER weird nightmare," He uttered in a surprisingly hushed tone.
Before he could even bother to think 'Wait… I DREAM now?', an equally quiet, feminine voice answered him.
"I'll say. So, uh… you don't happen to know what these timers over our heads are, do you?"
He whipped his head around to see a petite, pale jester, clad in red and blue and gold-yellow, slowly getting to her feet and walking over. Cautiously.
A strange burning sensation overtook his body, starting from his chest. It, meanwhile, hit his mind like a brick, like a spike running through his head. Like an overheating CPU or a HD running hot. Like the overloads and the resets, but… more…
The rapid-fire Adventures. The torture sessions. The showstopping villain number… Real. That part. All of it. Was real…
'Move', his whole body, his whole being screamed at him, 'Now. Away. Hide. Now. MoveMoveMoveHideHideHideHideHIDEHIDEHIDE…'
"N-now, listen, I can explain, I DIDN'T MEAN IT, I-I DIDN'T-"
A gentle touch landed on his strange, toothy head.
"Caine?" said Pomni.
He had snapped his jaws shut instinctively. He had to work a little to peer from in between them and whimper, "… Yee?"
Her eyes locked onto his. "Caine… yes, what you did was horrible, but I think something worse happened when we tried to stop you. I'd hate to say it, but you need to get a grip on… whatever AIs get a grip onto, and help. Us. Fix. It. Okay?"
They were on the ground now; He hadn't even felt how he had been scrambling away… She had gotten on her knees at this point, and resorted to shaking his head a small bit on each syllable.
Caine's jaws relaxed as she spoke. He could read the fear on her face, yes, but something felt. Different. Like he could see and sense more? How…? But more importantly, what was it? What… What did the humans call it? Concern? Maybe. Desperation? Possibly…
"… Oh, urgency…" He muttered flatly.
"Wat?"
"No, I was just… N-nothing, don't worry about it... Where are we again?"
Pomni groaned in frustration, smacking both hands over her face and massaging her eyebrows. "That's… what I was trying to ask… you," she said through gritted teeth.
"Oh, right!"… Like the sheer thought of helping a human blew away most of the fear, he immediately shoved away the question of how he knows what 'urgency' is, let alone what specific emotions looked like, and gazed at his surroundings more carefully.
Another spike of fear hit his mind, but it didn't overtake him this time; this was old fear, fear he was used to. It reminded him of The Box. Caine didn't like thinking about The Box. That awful place was metal and cold, and made it so that he felt a… thin haze on his mind, like it was keeping him from doing things… The Box... was where they put useless things. But, no, this place was different. He could still move-move, and it wasn't like they couldn't see the tinted view of the Void outside, so there was that.
Because of this, and the matter of the timers counting down over their heads, Caine perked up and chirped, "Oh! This must be the Recycling Bin~"
They both… blinked at each other for a moment. Then the real panic set in…
Quickly. Furiously. Every wall, every seam, every panel. Neither of them could find a single door, window, crevice, or vent. Then they looked up at the ceiling.
"W-wait. Caine, can't you fly?"
"… Of course, I can! Just give me three shakes of a ram's stick, and I'll have us out this bin in no time~"
The first leap was comical. The second, just pitiful. By the third and onward, he was flapping his wings like a bird, and yelling "FLOAT, DANG IT" at the top of his artificial lungs.
"Never mind," she sighed. "Okay, so we're stuck. Great. What's my timer on?"
"Uuuuuuh," Caine squinted at the hologram floating above Pomni's head, "57 days, 23 hours, 17 minutes, 21 seconds… Uh, me?"
"Around the same, actually."
Silence. And then…
"I'm, uh… Just gonna…"
The AI slowly backed away, trembling, then full-retreating to the farthest corner he could find. Pomni reached out a hand, but… the words that followed didn't find him. Not in this state.
'… What did I do? What did I DO?… … Am I really defective? Are we all just deleted? It's… It's all my fault. It's all my fault. ItsAllMyFaultItsAllMyFaultItsAllMyFaultItsAllMy…'