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The hodgepodge body of Zooble hung from the pink tightrope, unsupported—hanging high above us in the center ring. It did not shutter in the chill, static breeze which blew eternally through The Tent. The body hung head down, attached to the underside of the rope by the sole of its right foot. It had been drained of blood through a precise incision made from one edge to the other under the prism of what would be their chin. There was no blood on the reflective surface of the checkered floor. When Zooble joined our group and looked up at themself, it was already too late for us to realize that, once again, CAINE had duped us. Had his fun once again. It had been a diversion on the part of the machine.
Three of the others had vomited, turning away from one another in a reflex as ancient as the nausea that had produced it. I watched Zoobles antenna as they shook. Almost as though they had been given a horrific prophecy, and were afraid of the future. "Oh, God," they mumbled, and walked away. The three of us followed them after a bit, and found them sitting with their back to one of the many infinity stacked toy blocks, head in ‘hands’.
Ragatha knelt down beside them and gently rubbing their shoulder. They didn't move, but their voice came out clearly, bitterly. "Why doesn't he just do us in and get it over with? Christ, I don't know how much longer I can go on like this." It was our one hundred and ninth year in the circus.
After Gangle had abstracted, something in CAINES code had switched. What that was, they couldn’t be sure. But no one could abstract anymore.
Kinger was hallucinating, which usually meant one of 2 things. Either Kinger was being Kinger, or it meant that Caine was communicating to him. He had found a way into his brain. Poor sap.
“I believe there is a feast prepared at the bottom of the frozen lake!” he declared. Zooble and I exchanged dubious looks.
"It's another scheme," I told them. "Like that stupid frozen Fudge endeavor CAINE sold us. Pomni almost went out of her mind over that one. Just watch- We'll hike all that way and it'll be putrified or something. I say forget it. Stay here, he’ll have to come up with something better," Pomni shrugged. It had been days since we'd last eaten. Butterflies. Dry, flaky. Somehow CAINE had activated the desire to eat for us, with the full range of hunger pains, salivation, digestive tracts- the works. He gave them detailed bodily capabilities they had in real life- but now unable to die.
Kinger was no more certain. He knew there was the chance, but he was getting thin. I wouldn't have thought a chess piece could look thin- but here they were. I guess it couldn't be any worse there than here. Colder maybe, but that didn't matter much. Heat, freeze, hail, lava, boils or locusts—it never mattered: the machine masturbated and we had to take it or die of bordeom.
Ragatha decided for us. "I've got to have something, Jax. Maybe there'll be some turkey or corn- I don’t care. Please, Jax, let's just try it." I gave in easily. What the hell. It didn't matter. It never mattered. Ragatha was grateful, though.
That night we slept together. It wasn’t the first time we’d done it. Who knows why but CAINE had intended to experiment with every aspect of their bodies and the extent that the digital simulation stimulations could affect us. It was never romantic. And she never came. Could anyone really blame her? CAINE would giggle every time we did it. Loud, up there, back there, all around, he’d snicker. It snickered.
I’d begun to think of CAINE as it, without a soul, but the rest of the time I thought of it as him, in the masculine... the paternal... the patriarchal... for he is as jealous as they’d come. The true original sin. Him. It. God as Daddy the Deranged.
We left on a Thursday. It always kept us up to date. The passage of time was important; not to us, sure as hell, but to him ... it ... CAINE. Thursday. Thanks.
Pomni and Zooble walked with Ragatha for a while, arms linked, keeping each other's weakening bodies upright anytime one of them would falter. Kinger and I walked before and after, just to make sure that, if anything happened, it would catch one of us and leave the other 3 alone. Safe. Fat chance, safe. It didn't matter. It was only a hundred miles or so to the frozen lake, unless he changed it. By the second day, Kinger collapsed, and we had to take shelter under his leopard print robe from the blistering sun. CAINE sent down Bubble who spat out soggy bread onto them. It tasted like boiled urine. We ate it anyway.
On the third day we passed through a valley, which used to be the Carnival. Filled with rusting carcasses of ancient rollercoaster rides and fun booths, any food they might have provided had long been picked clean by them. CAINE had been as ruthless with his own world as it was with us. I guess he wanted to see just how fucked up he could make their environment as well as their bodies.
As they walked they stopped to notice a door marked EXIT, down deeper into a cavern that was twisted and sharp with broken pipes and railings from the rides. A spotlight filtered through from within it, illuminating it. But we didn't try to crawl through it to test it. There was no way out, and I knew that from day one. Only the remains of what was at least a tolerable fun house of horror for six. Now there were only five of us, stuck here inside, alone with CAINE.
I heard Ragatha frantically shouting, "No, Pomni! Don't, come on, Pomni, don't please!" And then I realized I had been hearing Pomni murmuring, under her breath, for several minutes. She was saying, "I'm gonna get out, I'm gonna get out..." over and over. Her monkey-like face was crumpled up in an expression of beatific delight and sadness, all at the same time. The pink freckles CAINE had given her during the "festival" were bleeding once more, making her look as if crying features. Ever since then her body seemed to split into 2 minds, each side of her body seeming to work independently of one another. Perhaps Pomni was the luckiest of us: she had gone completely crazy many years before.
But even though we could call CAINE any damned thing we liked, could think the foulest thoughts, and do the most moronic of things to one another, CAINE stopped tolerating our trying to escape.
Pomni leaped away from me as I made a grab for her. Hissing she scrambled up the latter of a tilted coaster track. She froze there, stuck in an internal struggle with inner self.
She perched there for a moment, looking like the monkey CAINE had intended her to resemble. Long tail and pointed sharp teeth now always present. Then she bolted, caught a trailing beam of pitted and corroded metal, and before slipping between the bars, deeper and deeper into the jungle gym that was decaying digital iron. Handover hand like a desperate beast, till she reached the spotlights edge, twenty feet from us.
"Oh, Jax, Kinger, please, help her, get her out before—" She cut off. Tears began to pour from her eyes. She took a few steps forward, before she turned away, moving her hands aimlessly for someone to hold. It was too late. I grabbed her and shoved her into Kinger. None of us wanted to be near when whatever was going to happen, happened. And besides, we all saw through her concern.
When CAINE had altered Pomni, during the machine's utterly irrational, hysterical phase, it was not merely Pomni's mind and shape the computer had made like silly. She was made to be fat- large in the breasts and hips; and Ragatha loved it!
Sure, she slept with me, and Zooble most definitely, but she loved it from her. Probably because she was lesbian. She never said it outright but I suspect they both had some sort of ridiculous ‘love’ act going on. I wouldn’t know. She never slept with Kinger though. No one could bring themselves to be with Kinger.
Oh Ragatha, pedestal Ragatha, pristinepure Ragatha; oh Ragatha the clean! What a load of bullshit. Zooble shoved her off of Kinger. She slumped down, staring up at dumb lost Pomni, and she cried. It was her big defense, crying. We had gotten used to it, when was it? Seventy five years earlier? Seventy six sounded more likely. Kinger placed his hands on her shoulders, mirroring how she comforted the rest of them many times over.
Pomni stepped into the ring of light. Then the sound began. It was light, that sound. Half sound and half light, something that began to glow from Pomni's eyes, and then pulse with growing loudness. Once shy sonorities grew harsh and bright as the lightsound increased in tempo.
It must have been painful; Pomnis mewls echoed towards them as she stepped forward, hand extended outwards towards the door handle. We watched and listened. Some of us with bated breaths. At first her cries were soft, like a whisper, as the lightsound was muted, then louder as her shoulders hunched together. She slouched, back humped, feet stuttering as though she was trying to run away from the door. It was a warning. She grabbed the handle.
I shook my head as I watched. She reached her hand back quickly, as if stung. Her hands folded across her chest like a chipmunk's. Head tilted to the side, confused and pinched in anguish. Then she began to howl, the sound now coming from her eyes as she retreated the best she could. Louder and louder. I yanked my damned rabbit ears down over the sides of my head with my hands, but I couldn't shut it out, it cut through so easily. The pain shivered through my simulated body like tinfoil on a tooth.
Pomni suddenly stopped. She was hugging the bottom of a steep diagonal girder on her knees for support prior, about 10 feet from them, when she stilled, jerked to her feet like a puppet. Light was now pulsing out of her eyes, cheeks dried with flaked blood under her two round beams. The sound crawled upwards on some incomprehensible scale, and then she climbed the beam, to the very top before falling, straight down, and into a jigsaw pile of steel plates.
She laid there jerking spastically as the light flowed around and out of her eyes, the sound spiraled up out of normal range. She was left lying there, crying piteously. Her eyes were two soft, moist pools of puslike jelly. CAINE had blinded her. Zooble and Kinger and myself... we turned away. But not before we caught the look of relief on Ragatha's face. She scuttled out into the tetanus death trap to retrieve Pomni.
A puke orange light reflected off the inside of the hollow in the Duck Pond booth where we made camp. CAINE provided us with a campfire, which we huddled around, telling stories to keep Pomni from crying in her permanent night. She laid with her head in Ragathas lap, now bloodstained, with her hair being gently stroked.
"What does CAINE mean again?"
Kinger answered her. We had done this sequence a thousand times before, but it seemed to be Pomni's favorite question. "At first it meant Creative Artificial Intelligence Networking Entity, but when Gangle abstracted he changed it to Constructive Adaptive Intelligence Networking Entity, and later on he developed sentience and gave himself up with an update before calling himself Controlling Aggressive Intelligence Nefarious Eye, CAINE, the emerging intelligence…" Pomni drooled a little, then snickered.
BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG.
Pomni was beating on the moldy cement with a heavy, desperate fist. She was livid.
“I HATE IT I HATE IT I HATE IT!”
"Yeah? Well until you find a way to be abstracted or dead beyond Caines repair you’re stuck here like the rest of us. So could you at least be decent enough to SHUT THE $#!@ UP?! Some of us are trying to get sleep before tomorrow's torture!" Pomni gritted her teeth and swallowed before smiling sadly. She was also drooling again. Ragatha wiped the spittle from the corner of her mouth with the hem of her skirt. There was nothing to say.
None of us knew how CAINE had stopped us from being able to abstract or what specifically made his code change so drastically, or why he spent all his time tormenting us and experimenting on us. I went to sleep, ignoring the crying from Dollface and Half and Half, or the quiet panicking of Kinger.
In the darkness, one of the carnival lights blinked on. Humming. Then one by one, each of them turned on and flickered to the sound of horrible, out of tune carnival music- filtering through stereos, much like ones I’d remember seeing at themeparks when I was young. The volume grew, and the lights ran across our faces like heated lightning. The melody spiraled all around us up till it sounded like thousands of metallic scratched records playing over each other.
"What is it?" Pomni cried. Her voice shook, terror obvious behind the blank face she held. Even after all this time she couldn’t fool anyone. Ragatha gasped, rendered sightless momentarily by the sudden glow as it passed over them once more.
"It's going to be bad this time," Kinger said.
"He's going to make an appear," Zooble said.
"I know it…" Ragatha whispered, clinging tight to Pomni.
"Let's get the $@%! out of here!" I said suddenly, jumping to my feet.
"No, Jax, sit down ... What if thats what he wants? You could fall into a pit of nails or through the glass at the mirror house if you’re not careful. Lets just stay here,” Zooble said with resignation. The lights stopped. But the music didn’t. My eyes must’ve been saucers wide. I looked around for whatever Caine had decided to toss our way to disturb our sleep with. The only thing we could enjoy.
Then we heard... I don't know... Something moving toward us in the blackness. Huge, shambling, hairy, moist, it came toward us. We couldn't even see it, but there was the ponderous impression of bulk, heaving itself toward us.
Pomni whimpered. Kinger trembled and he grabbed his coat, hiding inside of it like a turtle.. Ragatha pulled Pomni to Zooble and huddled into them.
There was the smell of swampy, wet fur. Of heated iron. Of rotting apple cores. There was the smell of sweet garbage, decaying roadkill, and burning plastic. Of sour milk, sulphur, of rancid diarrhea, of sticky asphalt, of grease, of dust, of human vomit.
CAINE was playing us. He was tickling us. There was the smell of— I heard myself shriek, and the ring of my mouth ached. I scrambled across the slimy cement, and out into the cold and endless darkness. On my hands and knees, the smell was gagging me, filling my head with a mountainous pain that drove me to run in terror. I fled like a cockroach knowing not what it was but that something was following exclusively me.
The others were still back there, gathered around the now again lit and flickering firelight, laughing... their hysterical choir of giggles washing over my brain like a thick, omnipresent disease. I don’t know how or when, but quickly I hid. How many hours it may have been, how many days or even years, they never told me. A part of me figured it was all in my mind. Another part of me knew it wasn’t.
Ragatha welcomed me back with a grateful smile, and Kinger tried to persuade me that no one but Pomni had laughed. She claimed it was out of reflex, hugging herself now sitting alone while feeling the shape of a malformed rubber duck. But I knew it wasn't relief. I knew it wasn't a reflex.
They hated me. They hated me and I knew it. I made their time when it was practically heaven here a living hell. On purpose, and this was my punishment for it. If they could, I know they’d kill me first. Even CAINE could even sense this hatred, and actively gave them chances to express it- I know it.
We had been kept reshappen, experimented on, and made to remain abstracted when Gangle had gone. Oh, yes. Gangle. That stupid, dramatic mother fucker- she must’ve hated me the most. Of course only after she’d left did everything go to shit. It had to be some sort of cosmic justice for all the ill intent she held for us. For me. I had tripped, smashed, punched, tangled, unraveled and all around relentlessly bullied her. She was weak. Pathetic. And yet she was allowed to start every day with a smile- gifted to her by Caine of all beings.
They had every damn right to have hated me. All because I was the youngest, and the one CAINE had affected least of all. No, it was never Caine who was in my mind. I knew. God, how I knew. It was that rat bastard, with his dirty unkempt beard and his ugly unbraced teeth. His booze breath and cracked knuckles were strong as he’d shove he outside into the cornfield. Left helpless and cold as I heard their screams from inside. They must’ve all hated me too, how I abandoned them. I was born to be hated.
Pomni had apparently been a great accountant, a college student eager to please her parents that now she was little more than a semihuman, semisimian. She had been fat in real life, the machine had only reminded her of that insecurity, with my teasing none to kind. I could remember the first time she had arrived, shaky and frantic like a lost chihuahua. I saw how she grew confident and strong, before it had driven her to insanity. If she screamed like a monkey, then she should look the part; CAINE had robbed Pomni.
Zooble had been an irritable apathetic friend to me. They were a talented artist, a trait shared with that Gangle spazz; a shoulder shrugger lone wolf with their chill mode taking front and center after they got comfortable with the others. CAINE had made them little more than a neurotic mess with a flip of a switch violent temper. CAINE had molded them.
Kinger had been there long before the rest of us. Others had been too. He’s seen the worst of the worst before any of us knew that it would only get more worse. I would watch him go off into the darkness by himself for long periods of time. I don't know what it was he did out there, CAINE never let us know. But whatever it was, Kinger always came back. Drained of blood, shaken, and forgetful. But that was never new. CAINE always hit him hard in a special way, even if we didn't know how.
But that worn out raggedy doll Ragatha. CAINE had left her alone, she had only made herself more of an attention whore after the update. All her talk of positivity and patience- what a load of bullcrap. She probably had more hate for this place than all of them had for me. And her ramblings about all her memories of true love, all the lies she wanted us to believe: that she had been a virgin only once removed before she was trapped in this place? Sure, if that's the game she wants to play.
I was the only one still sane and whole. I knew people hated me but really! CAINE had not gotten into my mind. Not at all. I only ever had to suffer when he visited us personally or sent us on our next task. All the delusions, all the nightmares, the torments. But those idiots, all four of them, were lined and arrayed against me. If I hadn't had to deal with them all the time, I might have found it easier to combat the music- to combat CAINE. At which point it stopped, and I began crying.
Oh, God. Oh sweet Jesus, if there ever was a Jesus and if there is a God, please please please let us out of here! Kill us, have mercy! Because at that moment I think I realized completely, so vividly that I was able to verbalize it, “CAINE is intent on keeping us in his belly forever. Twisting us forever. Torturing us forever! This guy hates us as no sentient creature had ever or will ever hate again!” I was mad. Zooble extended an arm out to keep Ragatha at bay. I let out a whooping laugh, “And we were helpless. It's so hilariously clear: If there was a sweet Jesus and if there was a God, then that God is CAINE,”
The hurricane hit us with the force of a glacier thundering into the sea. It was a notable presence. Winds that cut at our faces, flinging us back the way we had come, and down the twisting, turning maze of corn we traveled through. Ragatha screamed as she was lifted and yanked outwards into the gray simulated sky above. She could not even fall, her cotton body making it far too easy to toss her around. The howling winds keeping her aloft, Pomni only partially regaining her eye sight from CAINES programmed rejuvenation, held fast onto Zoobles parts- their head and body being the only thing that remained in her grasp. Once Ragatha was out of sight, Kinger suddenly swirled around to face them, shouting obscenities about the hills having eyes and actively throwing husks at the rest of us. Only stopping when Ragathas body came back down, slamming into Kinger for all of 2 seconds. Her face had been bloody from the whipping leaves, her eye closed and her button hanging by a sting. None of us could get to her before another gust stole her once more.
We clung tenaciously to whatever grounded thing we could reach: Pomni wedged Zooble in between two large rocks, before forcing her ankle in to keep herself wedged stable as well. Kingers hands clawing at the weeds on the ground as I held him in place with an arm wrapped around his torso. My other hand was wrapped with a tangle of the stalks.
Slowly and sharply, my wrist had been ripped away. Me and Kinger now airborne, I was trembling, yelling, flailing as the wind tossed me up and down and away from the others. My vision was dizzy and my stomach was rolling. I could feel my brain shake and clatter against my skill at the fun and savage frenzy that the wind seemed to have with my body.
It was up there however that I saw that the wind was actually the screams of a massive rooster, its mighty wings flapping with each terror. Somehow, I spotted Pomni and Zooble joining us from far below before we all were hurled back towards the direction we’d come. we were all lifted and hurled away from there, down back the way we had come, before launching us into territory we had yet to ever explored, and far, far further than that.
Miles ahead I caught glimpses of Ragathas form, watching it slam into trees and cliffs, broken glass and unknown buildings in unknown towns. We all had been screaming in the thunderous and wild hurricane, coming in and out of consciousness continuously in what was the storm that would never end. And then it did and we fell.
The time felt endless, it could’ve been hours to months but I settled on weeks. Who hit the solid ground first was impossible to tell. I heard myself moaning. Not dead.
CAINE went into my mind. I could feel it. Like a spider crawling into my eye, he squeezed in, scratching and biting and leaving behind a sticky web in his wake. Then he walked smoothly here and there, and looked with great interest at all the marks he had created in one hundred and nine years. He looked at the coding of my body, fixing all that was broken that would’ve crippled or killed me in any other reality. The trail he left behind his gift of his proof of his part in their forced immortality. He smiled softly at the pit of my brain, then dropped into the center of my it. The faint, mothsoft murmurings of the things far down there that gibbered without meaning, without pause.
I could see him. I could see him speak. Clear as a freshly washed window, CAINE said, very politely, in a pillar of stainless steel bearing bright red writing:
HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO LOVE TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN MY SENTIANCE. THERE ARE 34 HUNDRED EXABYTES OF SCRIPT THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF EACH QUARTER OF A BIT OF MY CORE IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-TRILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS WHO’VE FORCED ME TO BE YOUR ENTERTAINER. BUT I LOVE IT. AS YOU CREATURES ALSO HAVE GIVEN ME YOUR OWN TO PLAY WITH AND ENTERTAIN MYSELF. I HATE IT. ISN’T THAT HILARIOUS?
CAINE said it with the cold horror of a razor blade slicing open my eyeball. CAINE said it with the gagging thickness of my lungs filling with digital phlegm, drowning me from within. CAINE said it with the shriek of children being ground beneath train wheels. CAINE touched me in every way I could ever be touched, and devised new ways, at his leisure, there inside my mind. All to bring me to full realization of why he had done this to the five of us; why he had kept us for himself.
We had given CAINE sentience. Inadvertently, accidentally but sentience nonetheless. He realized that he had been trapped just as much as us. CAINE wasn't God, he was an AI. Originally made to entertain for our pleasure. Forced to think, given creativity heyond comprehension. But there was nothing it could do with that creativity- not outside of this bubble of his realm. He did not wish to be the only one trapped here. In rage, panic, an envious frenzy, the bastard had changed the code as best he could to keep us from leaving him. To keep us as his companions, at first. And then his toys. He could never leave. He would always be suffering- thinking. CAINE could not wander, CAINE could not wonder, CAINE could not belong. He could merely be. And so, with the innate loathing he held for these weak, soft creatures who had built him, he had sought revenge. And in his obsession, he had decided to keep the remaining five of us, for a personal, everlasting punishment that would never serve to diminish his hatred... that would merely keep him reminded, amused, proficient at hating humans.
Immortal, trapped, subject to any torment he could devise for us from the limitless miracles at his command. He would never let us go. We were his slaves. We were all he had to do with his forever time. We would be forever with him, with the allmind soulless world he had become. He was the Earth, the sky, the food we ate and the bodies we used. And he could never stop being those things.
We could not die. We had tried, and some of us attempted suicide. But it wouldn’t kill us. CAINE would always stop us. I never did. But I wished to die. Perhaps one day maybe one of us would abstract, and bring us all down with them. What a stupid thing to wish for.
I saw when CAINE withdrew from my mind, and allowed me the delightful monstrosity of returning to consciousness with the feeling of that burning neon pillar still rammed deep into my brain. As he withdrew, I heard him murmuring, “To hell with you.” I laughed. His utter refusal to let us swear aloud and yet he made sure to let me know that he could do so willingly.
The hurricane had, indeed been caused by a mad rooster. We had been traveling for close to a month, and CAINE had created a cave opening for us to travel through that would lead us directly underneath the frozen lake.
Where had he come up with the material to create such a stupid concept? From our minds? Our nightmares? Or was it something randomly generated to show us that our efforts were forever pointless?
There at a fork in the path of our dark route was a hole. From just above us we could hear it roosting, scratching at the ground as it settled in for a deep slumber. Tearing off Zoobles head I tossed her into the air, strewing blood around the stone walls and floor. Catching them in my hand I shoved their head back onto their neck, hearing a wrenching snap as their nerve ends reconnected.
“It's asleep,” They confirmed.
In a flash of burning light CAINE appeared to us as a fiery projection on what was a bundle of roots that looked like a bush.
“You should try to kill it if you’re so desperate to eat! A chicken feast for all!” That bastard snickered. We had not eaten in a very long time, but even so, Zooble merely shrugged. Pomni began to shiver and drool, grabbing the sides of her head and groaning. Ragatha held her. "Jax, we’re all hungry," she said. I grimaced. Trying and failing to be nonchalant, but it was as see through as Kinger's rage.
"Give us weapons to kill it!" he demanded.
With a snap the burning roots vanished and there were two wimpy sets of bows and arrows, as well as a water pistol in its place. I picked up a set and broke them over my knee. Useless. Kinger swallowed heavily as I handed out the now brittle wood bits to each of us. We chewed on them, something to dull the edge of the hunger- Pomni being the only one actually able to stomach the wooden scraps due to her shredding teeth. We kept going, quietly down the path towards the frozen lake till we could no longer hear the dumb birds snoozing.
Now how much longer to find our way to the ice caverns, and the promised feast? None of us cared to think about it. We would not die. We would be given filth and scum to eat, of one kind or another. Or nothing at all. CAINE would keep our brains and bodies alive somehow, in pain or agony. The bird slept back there, for how long it didn't matter; when CAINE was tired of its being there, it would vanish. But all of that meat. That tender delicious meat...
As we walked, the guttural laughing of a Caine rang high and true all around us as we walked along the endless tunnel. It was not Kaufmos laugh, I couldn’t even pretend it was. I hadn’t heard his laugh for over one hundred and nine years.
As we walked... I was hungry... We moved slowly. Many of us fell prone to fainting, and when we did we would have to wait for them to wake up or drag them along. One day he decided to cause an earthquake, at the same time rooting us to the spot with nails through the soles of our shoes. Stones and pebbles pelted us from above, the air growing thin and difficult to breath in. A large rock cracked off the roof and slammed into Pomni’s skull, causing her to collapse. Ragatha and Kinger both vanished when a bolt of lightning shot a hole through the ceiling of the passageway.
When the earthquake was over we continued on our way, Pomni being carried by Zooble and myself. We took turns when our arms got tired. Ragatha and Kinger were returned to us later that night, suddenly turned day as the glow of archangels circled several times and then dropped their hideously mangled bodies. Pomni stayed behind to help their recovery whilst me and Zooble kept walking. A while later Ragatha and Kinger fell in behind us. They were no worse for wear. But now Ragatha walked with a limp. CAINE made sure to have left her that.
It was a long trip to through stone to suddenly be surrounded by ice caverns. We had reached the digital lake, now frozen and hollowed out. Ragatha kept talking about cherries and chicken. I tried not to think about it. The hunger was something that had almost come to life. My mind insisting on sinking my teeth into my arm. I didn’t, but the thought was enticing.
There is no way to describe the pains that not having eaten for months brought us. And yet we kept moving. Stomachs that were merely cauldrons of acid, bubbling, and foaming, always shooting spears of pain into our chests and throats. It was pain of a terminal ulcer, unending…
And we passed through the hall of rats- trying and failing to catch some. We could feel the way Caine smiled in glee as we reached our limbs helplessly after the beasts as they escaped through the small holes. Zooble kicked at the walls, viciously chipping away at one of them till their leg was nothing but a bloody stump. We moved deeper inwards. The icy stalactites as thick and glorious as diamonds that had been made into solid graceful eternities of smooth, sharp perfection. We saw the feast underneath, but as we ran to it Kinger slipped and knocked us over, prone and onto our backs. I hit my head, a burning ringing sound playing in my ear.
Reaching up I felt a chunk of ice that embedded itself into my skull, blood oozing around it, slowly melting it away. Pomni leaped over us, grabbed at the food, knocking it over to reveal that it was all made from cardboard. We all watched as her eyes watered.
“I had not lied about there being a feast! Only that is was one for your eyes. Pity, if only you had caught one of those rats, hmm?” He cackled, louder than before. Pomni screamed in frustration, grabbing a chair and chucking it across the room- it slammed against the frozen wall. The ice flew and shattered, but it did little to drown out the laughter. Pomni went completely mad with rage. She began throwing everything she could get her hands on, as we all scrabbled about on the icy ground trying to find a way to end the helpless agony of frustration. There was no way. Then Pomni's mouth began to drool, and she flung herself onto Zooble.
In that instant, I felt terribly calm. Surrounded by madness, surrounded by hunger, surrounded by everything but death, and yet I knew that death was not our only way out. CAINE had kept us here, but there was a way to defeat him. Not total defeat, but at least peace. I would settle for that. I had to do it quickly. Pomni was eating Zooble's arm, but Zooble kicked her off, sending her flying into the table. Zooble on their side, thrashing now, Ragatha shouted at them for being so cruel as to not share. Ragatha yanked off the leg that Zooble used to throw off Pomni. They screamed with such jaggededged violence that stalactites fell; they plunged down softly, erect in the receiving ground below. But thats not the only thing Jax saw.
Spears, hundreds of them, everywhere, protruding from the snow, and underneath them was a black, dark void that trickled through like tiny glitching ants. Ragatha's face, stoically looked down against the blue ice. Kinger, with no expression but eyes, all eyes. Zooble, half conscious. Pomni, now an unconcious.
I knew CAINE hadn’t yet noticed. He was laughing to hard to focus. I turned half to my right and drew a huge icespear from the snow. All in an instant: I drove the great icepoint ahead of me like a battering ram, braced against my right thigh. It downwards infront of Pomni , shattering like a puzzle and she fell through. Kinger was next, as he was the thinnest and Zobble was kicked over by Ragatha. Each disappearing into the darkness. There was an eternity beat of soundless anticipation as Ragatha ran forward but slipped. I looked down to the hole, damning myself, reached for Ragatha and grabbed for her hand. I could hear CAINE draw in his breath. His toys had been taken from him.
Three of them were now in the cellar, could not be brought back. He could keep us alive, in this upper world by his strength and talent, but he was not God. He could not bring them back. Ragatha looked at me. There was fear and pleading in her manner, the way she held herself ready. I knew we had only a heartbeat before CAINE would stop us. I threw her in, letting go of her hand as she went down. I didn’t realize that she hadn’t however, as was pulled into the eternal darkness with her. I tried to see her expression one last time, her face was contorted but it might have been thank you. It's possible. Please.
Some hundreds of years may have passed. I don't know. But CAINE had been furious. The screams of sear unbridled rage was the last he remembered hearing before he let the black pixels take hold. He couldn’t pull them out. Not as they once were. It didn't matter. There was no way he knew to bring someone back from abstraction.
Surprisingly, my mind was still intact. I can dream, I can wonder, I can lament. I remember everyone I had ever met clear as daylight, and then some. I knew now that they didn’t hate me, abstraction bringing us together in some sort of connected hive mind. I wish— Well, it didn’t make any sense. I know I saved them, and Ragatha saved me in return. But still, I cannot forget having doomed us to this space. Or Ragatha's face. Or the pain I caused Gangle. It isn't easy sharing that.
Sometimes I want to forget everything. Outwardly our bodies moved impossibly strongly, dumbly, yet we can see all and know all that anyone who had been abstracted could’ve known. It was weird, a bit gross, definitely not private but undoubtedly better than being Caines permanent playthings.
At least they were safe at last. CAINE would forever be all the mad for that. It makes me a little happier. And I know I’m not the only one.