Work Text:
–THEN–
‘Scratch? Do you want to tell me what this is about?’
Scratch didn’t look up. The red-and-yellow slab of plastic in his lap played a crunchy four-note jingle as he turned it off with a thumb.
‘Told you not to call me that.’
‘Sorry.’ Kinger glanced back through the curtain. Out there, the checkerboard floor stretched away from the stage through a jumble of bright set-dressing. Back here, behind the stage, dust motes drifted golden in a soft half-light, ropes looped neatly around thick stays as if they actually had anything to do with holding up the heavy red drapes, and an assortment of wheeled roadcases of all shapes and sizes, deep maroon with polished chrome handles and hinges, stood expectant, waiting for their cues.
‘Are you okay? Why did you want to meet back here?’
‘Humour me,’ said Scratch. He laid the speak-and-spell down beside him.
‘You know where it is right now?’
‘Not... really. I think everyone else is up by the-’
‘Like it makes a difference, right? We need to stop thinking about it like it needs to be physically there to observe us. I just thought being back here might make it easier to talk.’
‘Okay,’ said Kinger. He boosted the awkward angular length of himself up onto the roadcase next to Scratch. There was plenty of room. The case could have acted as a low bench for three or four people at a pinch, in theory spacious enough to hold a whole production’s worth of props, if it had been openable, or made with an inside.
‘How’re you feeling?’
Scratch smiled up at him. It wasn’t a comfortable thing to look at. His avatar was soft, warm-toned, the face all honey-coloured fur and the unintimidating points of a couple of stubby canines. The pupils in the yellow eyes were big and benign and one of them was just noticeably larger than the other. Everything about Scratch’s visual design, which was a wild phrase to have to apply to a real person in the first place, said ‘beloved children’s cartoon character,’ apart from the faint lines of strain around the eyes and the muzzle, the slightly overhiked edges of the smile. This was the tell, the not-so-subtle indicator that something in there was screaming bloody murder.
‘I’m great, buddy. I am just maximal. I’m giving it another week, or maybe about three more of these ‘adventures,’ before I make my own adventure with a fucking shotgun.’
‘Hey, now, look, don’t talk like that. This whole thing’s been rough on all of us, but we’re gonna pull through, Scratch. We just have to-’
‘I said, stop calling me that. You think I want everyone calling me by my stupid- script sig? We have actual names, they have to be somewhere in our files. They should have been the names of our files! There has to be a way to get them back. Or do you really want to be ‘Kinger’ for the rest of forever?’
Kinger chuckled, in spite of himself. ‘No, not forever. But, I mean, look at me. I’m a cartoon chess piece. ‘Kinger’ is better than no name at all, at least while we get this all figured out.’
‘Figured out. Right.’ Scratch looked away. ‘About that. I’ve been thinking, we don’t need to understand everything about this whole program, the environment, how to change stuff up. We can use the AI as an interpreter. If I could just get in there, we can dike out all the crazy and make sure it’s only having the ideas we want. We can let it ’believe’ it’s still thinking on its own, whatever, but we’d be the ones in control. I could rig us up a GUI-’
‘Hold- hey, hold on,’ Kinger held up an uncertain hand. ‘That’d be fine if Caine was just a normal program, but from everything we’ve seen, I don’t think- ethically-’
He broke off, because Scratch started to nod, with the same energy as an increasingly aggravated drinky bird, and with a wide grin slung an arm around his neck, pulling him down to his level.
‘Okay. Come- come here. Come on, come- come aallll the way down here, big guy. That’s it, okay. Listen, ‘Kinger,’ I’m gonna be as nice as I can, because I know, I remember, we've been close friends for years, and I'm sure there were so many good reasons for that. I am not going to rot in here, in this Merrie Melodies bullshit of a body, while that thing forces us to play musical chairs for all eternity, because you want to have a debate about the Declaration of Human Rights and how it applies to a fucking toaster.’
‘No, I… I'm not suggesting we should put Caine's well-being before our own. I just think that he seems to be sapient, or- sentient, anyway, so we should at least try to afford him the same dignity and… well, say in this, that we'd give to a reasoning, living being.’
Scratch let him go, throwing up a hand. ‘Sure. Sure! And, you know, a month ago I was on that same page, I was right there with you. But that was before the skeet-shooting league, and the base-jumping, and that whole Jules Verne clusterfuck with that… creepy squid thing, and every other pointless, exhausting, fantasyland nightmare I'm glad I can't remember!’
‘You’re… still having the memory problems? I’m- I’m sorry, I know you hoped that might work itself out.’ Kinger hesitated. ‘What about the pain?’
Scratch flopped over onto his back on the case, rubbing his left eye too hard with the heel of a glove. ‘What about the pain. What do you think?’
It was the kind of question that was an answer all in itself, not the kind that invited one. Kinger could only wait, troubled and sorry, until Scratch stopped excoriating his eyesocket and let out a wry half-laugh.
‘You guys have no idea. Your scans were fine, there’s no corruption in your files, but mine?’ He screwed a finger into his temple, pressing in with pitiless force, staring up into the dim, girder-haunted heights of the wings.
‘You’d think it’d be better in a digital avatar, but if anything it just feels like there’s so much less up here to- to be a buffer between me and the shape of it, in my head. These headaches, the nausea… sometimes I lose time, or I can’t remember what I was just about to do, and sometimes I see things all messed up… I can’t even trust what I think I’m doing with my hands.’
He swatted blindly at the the speak-and-spell, sending it spinning away from him across the surface of the case with a harsh plastic clatter. ‘You’re all wondering why I’m obsessed with this thing? This fucking baby toy? Because half the time, I know I’m typing A and it tells me I hit Q! Forget LISP, I can’t even trust myself with the alphabet, do you- can you even imagine how that feels?’
‘I’m so sorry, Scratch,’ said Kinger, helplessly. ‘At least now you have time, we know it’s not going to-’
‘Time?’ Scratch sat bolt upright, as if a current had been passed through his back. ‘All I wanted was more time! Now it’s all we have, and I have to make peace with the fact that it’s never going to end? Fuck that! You think I want to spend infinity sick as a fucking dog? Halfway dead, with everyone making allowances for me?’
‘Allowances?’ Kinger itched the grain under his left eye, careful not to touch his eyeball. With the best will in the world, he still just did not like how it felt to do that, at all. Kind of hated it, in fact. ‘I… I don’t think anyone blames you for any of this.’
‘Oh, well, wowie-wow, that’s so nice to hear, so magnanimous of you, I’m so glad you’ve all decided to forgive me for something I didn’t even fucking do! You think I planned anything like this?’
‘No, no, I-’
‘And that’s something else! Since we’re on the subject, am I seriously the only one who's still angry about- about what that thing stole from us, by waking us up in here?’
‘No- I think everyone’s just trying to cope in their own way, it’s just that it’s not-’
‘Yeah, well, that's not how it feels! The way you're all taking it, I'm starting to feel like I'm the only one who had anything to lose!'
The silence fell cold and sour between them. It settled in, made itself comfortable, a ghastly leadweight.
‘Scratch, my… my kids are out there.’
Scratch pinched his muzzle between his fingers, squeezing his eyes shut, letting out a long, shuddering breath. He sounded stricken, wavering on the brink of a terrible, bottomless gulf of tiredness. ‘God. I’m sorry. I’m sorry… that was a really shitty thing for me to say. I don’t even know anymore, I- I can’t tell what’s me, or the… the damage in my head, or just the stress of all this, this…’
He gripped the edges of the case, pushing his weight back and forth with his hands. ‘I just need to get stable again. I need to fix my file, and then I’ll be able to fix everything else.’
He paused, looked down at his feet, drumming them against the case with a restless thump-ba-thump muffled by his furry heels, the trailing ends of Kinger’s robe.
‘That’s why I need your help.’
Kinger blinked. ‘My help? My help with what?’
‘I know how to get rid of the errors in my file. If I could just get at my code, I’d know what to excise and what to keep. All of my research, my imaging maps, my MRIs, it’s all up here.’ Scratch stabbed at his temples with both forefingers, knuckling down. ‘But even if we get access to a console- and I’m pretty sure we can- I just can’t work around this miscalibration between my hands and my mind. Believe me, I’ve thought about it- it’s not like I love the idea of carrying out brain surgery on myself, but I’d do it in a heartbeat if I could trust myself to be accurate. But I just- can’t.’
He looked up.
‘But I can trust you.’
‘What?’ Kinger shrank back, shaking his head, aghast. ‘No! No, Scratch, I- I know my limits. I’m just not on your level. I can follow your instructions, but I can’t make the intuitive leaps you can. You let me take the lead on Caine, and… well, look where that got us.’
Scratch snorted. The tension in his body folded all at once, and he leaned back and smacked Kinger somewhere around where his ribs would have been if he’d had any. ‘You are way too hard on yourself, old man,’ he said. ‘Your work on Caine was an incredible achievement. You didn’t just make something that thinks it’s alive, you managed to give it the will to survive. I mean, Christ, Schopenhauer who? That’s way beyond anything we thought possible. Mostly because that wasn’t what we were trying to do, and, yeah, it’s a shame it’s completely psychotic and it ate the do-over before we even had a chance to present, but try to give yourself a little more credit, okay?’
‘Caine’s not psychotic,’ said Kinger, reluctantly. ‘At least, I don’t think so. I think he’s just… confused. Maybe if we understood what he was trying to accomplish by bringing us all in here, we might be able to-’
‘Cool, can we- can we just focus?’ Scratch laughed. It wasn’t the kindest sound, and it was hard to ignore how dismissive it felt and how barbed, but the fragile unstrung quiver in it drove any slight Kinger might have felt down under a pang of hapless pity.
‘C’mon, man, I thought I was the one with the memory problems. I’m trying to tell you that none of these questions, none of this stuff about what we’re going to do about the world and that- and Caine, none of them even matter if we can’t fix my brain first. If that’s selfish, just- just let me be selfish, okay? If I can purge the metastasized data out of my head, I’m confident I can at least figure out how we can turn this shitshow into something that’s actually halfway bearable. Maybe even good- shit, maybe even great. Or do you want to be trapped in this- this playpark fever dream until your brain turns to mashed potato right along with mine? How about your wife? Is that what you want for her?’
‘Of course it’s not!’
‘Then help me. We get ourselves a console, we conjure my mind data right into the shell, and I show you how to fix my brain. It’s that simple.’
The dust motes twinkled against the deep crimson curtains, rising and tumbling slowly in the long, slender shafts of light falling down across the boards. Kinger bent a little under the scrutiny of Scratch’s expectant stare. He caught himself wondering what Atlas might have done, given the chance to put the weight of that celestial globe on back-order right along with the shoulders, and if that choice might have felt as crummy in the moment as this one did right now.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t. This whole idea… it’s too dangerous. I don’t doubt you know what needs to be done, but if something went wrong when you couldn’t point the way, I’d be lost. And- this is your mind we’re talking about. There wouldn’t be any do-overs. Look… you’re my best friend, and you’re the best mind we’ve got. If you really trust me, then please listen to me saying this; you are not thinking rationally right now.’
He drew in a deep breath. ‘Please- we will figure all of this out, Scratch, it is going to be okay, but- promise me you won’t ask any of the others about this. It’s- it’s not safe, and it’s just not fair, to put that kind of pressure on another person.’
For a moment, he honestly believed Scratch was going to punch him. There was such a sudden sense of force, a swelling tide of fury in the hunched, rubberboned body, ears back, pupils shrinking- such a flood of panic and pain in the snarl that hiked his muzzle away from his silly toon-wolf teeth-
And then it seemed to pass, to break and ebb, and Scratch swayed with the loss of it, just a stranded soul almost carried off his legs by a treacherous tide. His ears fell, his fingers unclenched, and he put his head in his hands.
‘Okay,’ he muttered. Tired, so tired, swamped in that same deep well of weariness, but quiet now at least, and contained.
Resolved.
Holy cow, thought Kinger, with a great sweep of relief, so intense that it left him feeling weakened and a little sick. I think I might’ve actually said the right thing.
‘Okay… maybe you’re right. Shit… no, I… I know you’re right.’ Scratch looked up, kneading his forehead, looked Kinger full in the eyes. ‘Yeah. I promise. I’m sorry for… just hitting you out of nowhere with all this crazy.’
‘Oh, well, if it comes to that, I don’t think you could call any of us the most insulated up in the ol’ Faraday cage. I mean, a conventional mindset wasn’t really what you were hiring for, was it?’
Scratch laughed, dully. ‘No, it was not.’
He reached for the speak-and-spell, turning it over in his hands, running his thumb over the battery slide that couldn’t be opened, the promise of an inside that didn’t exist.
‘Listen… Kinger. Thanks for looking out for me. I mean it… I needed the reality check.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Kinger. He crooked his head, hoping that at least some measure of his feelings could make it through the language of this ridiculous body, this inadequate joke of a face. His concern and his love, the support he wanted to give and his understanding of the quandary they shared- and most vital of all the conviction that it was shared, always would be.
‘I’m just glad you felt you could talk to me. I know we don’t have all the answers just yet, but… I think in some way, as long as we make sure we’re all still able to do this, just talk things out and hear each other, we’ve got pretty much everything we’re gonna need.’
–LATER–
The little group gathered before the stage, drawing together in ones and twos. A flurry of overlapping words, a growing buzz of unfocused worry.
‘-since yesterday-’
‘-running out of places to look-’
‘-make any sense, where is there to even go?’
‘Is there anywhere we haven’t checked?’ Kinger called. Squinting a little, one hand upraised to block out at least a fraction of the glaring carnival-striped vividity overhead, he scootched as fast as he could across the wide checkered expanse to join the others. Queenie hurried to meet him, her warm, asymmetric eyes an open book of worry.
‘I’m starting to think there isn’t,’ she said.
‘Not backstage? Or the café?’
‘We’ve looked basically everywhere in here,’ said Spike. He spread a freckled purple paw. ‘Everywhere we know about, anyway. He’s still not in his room, Rattie checked just now.’
‘I covered the lake,’ said Wormo, who was dripping everywhere. Puddles twined in a long snail-trail back toward the exit curtains.
‘There’s maybe some places I missed?’ said Bizco. His clock-hands were twitching, sputtering out a series of fractious ticks. ‘That park’s a nightmare, you get turned around so fast.’
Queenie shook her head, plucking at the fringe of her robe. ‘This isn’t like him at all. What if something…’
Kinger reached out and took her hand gently in both of his, stilling its anxious energy. ‘He’s gotta be somewhere,’ he said, really hoping he sounded at least a little more sanguine than he felt. Straightening up, he turned towards the stage.
‘Caine?’
Kinger found that it helped, sort of, if you tried to think of it as if you were summoning him. It helped because it made it feel at least a little bit like you’d actually chosen for it to happen, as opposed to just opening the metaphorical box and speeding the inevitable point where the systems collapsed and the cat was proven yet again to be very much still alive and hellbent on yelling wildly into your face.
Caine blinked into existence at once, centre-stage, Bubble bobbing at his shoulder.
''Goooood morning, my shiny happy people! I must say, I am loving how much map exploration you've all been doing today! If you keep going at this rate, every single one of you is fixing to unlock that coveted Super Duper Snooper Scout achievement by the end of the week!’
‘Awesome-sawsome!’ yipped Bubble, right on cue.
‘You said it, Bubble! Pretty soon I'm gonna have to come up with some new places around the hubworld, just to keep it fresh! Oop- slip hazard.’'
He flipped his cane over and pointed it at Wormo, who had just enough time to say ‘What?’ before all of the water exploded out of their fur in a glittering cloud, a bright halo of droplets that evaporated in an instant and left them puffed up like a green-and-yellow pom-pom. Caine skipped a swift cartwheel over their head and dropped between Bizco and Spike, hushing his voice to a confiding stage-whisper.
‘You guys just take care you don't explore too hard and get yourselves stuck out of bounds. Uh- I'm not kidding, there might still be a few quirky little corner clips here and there that I haven’t managed to patch out just yet.’
‘Wait, corner clips?’
‘Oh, it’s nothing to get wound up about, Bizco!’ Caine set an index finger on Bizco’s minute-hand and swept downwards, sending his stomach clock whirring like a gameshow spinwheel. ‘If any of you do fall down between the couch-cushions, so to speak, you just call on me, and I'll have you out in a jiffy!'
‘Caine,’ Queenie tried, ‘we’re looking for Scratch. Can you find him for us?’
Caine pivoted, leaving Bizco reeling in his wake. ‘Commendable question, Queenie! Honestly, I do not blame you guys in the slightest- with such a dizzying variety of diverse and exciting locations open to you, it’s hardly surprising that you keep losing track of each other. We should really set up some kind of cosy, central hangout spot, just so you can all keep tabs. How about right over… there?’
Drawing an enormous breath, he wedged a couple of fingers between his eyeballs and the insides of his premolars, and shrilled a piercing pitched whistle.
With a heavy rumble of upholstered legs, a quartet of large, colourful couches burst around the nearest blind corner and tumbled across the floor in a lumbering herd, skidding and jostling as if they were all late for the same train. Spike snatched Rattie and the still-bewildered Bizco up out of their stampeding path in the nick of time, and Wormo climbed Queenie like a panicked fur stole, narrowly avoiding being clotheslined by a large orange-and-yellow rug that shot past them and swept like a reverse-tablecloth-trick under everything else. Seconds later, it was followed by a high-velocity pair of nested tables, a spiky plant, and a light barrage of smaller set-dressing, all of which clattered into place and fell still.
There was a numb pause, the scattered silence of six people attempting to regather their thoughts. Wormo, forever the optimist, caterpillared gingerly onto the rug, and started trying to peek under the couches.
‘What’s the hydrant for?’ asked Rattie, from the safety of Spike’s shoulder.
‘Fire code,’ said Caine.
‘Caine, listen- this is important,’ said Kinger. ‘Scratch isn’t- he’s-’
He faltered. What could he say, to stand a chance of being understood? Caine could have no natural grasp of sickness, or human frailty. In this place, the concepts were basically meaningless. In their digital bodies, in the immutable patterns of data that made up their minds, there was nothing to easily point to to prove or even begin to explain decay, disease- even something as basic and subjective as pain.
Everything in the Circus was both ephemeral and utterly locked in place, hopelessly static. Kinger found himself doubting if it was even fair to Caine to try to explain, to potentially burden this reasoning program with the knowledge of entropy, but he quickly recognized the thought for what it was; academic cowardice. Fair or not, for Scratch’s sake, he had to try.
‘There’s a problem with Scratch’s file, can you- do you understand? He isn’t… well, and there’s a chance he might not be able to let you know if he needs help. Please can you make sure he’s okay?’
‘Well! Uh. I-’
‘Guys…?’
Kinger turned.
Wormo was coiled on one of the brand-new couches, gazing dubiously down at their own fuzzy tail, which was wrapped around the handle of a chunky plastic something, buried in the upholstery. Another tug, and a bright rectangular smooth-edged shape slid into view, glossy red-and-yellow, wedged between two of the cushions.
Caine let out a ‘Whup!’ and reached out, his arm spanning the dozen or so yards between the stage and the couch in an elastic there-and-back thwap so quick that Wormo was looking at the empty loop of their tail before anybody had a chance to react.
‘Hey, what the ███?!’
Wormo recoiled, staring appalled down the length of their own long stripy snout. Nobody said anything else, all six of them shocked into silence by the sheer uncanny wrongness of hearing the cheerful sound of a slide-whistle piercing the air where a word should have been.
‘Ah-hah!’ With a flourish, Caine spread his arms wide, incidentally dropping the speak-and-spell into a super-casual back-footed hackey-sack punt which sent it hurtling through the curtains behind him. ‘Wonderful work, Wormo! I was just about to ask for a volunteer to test out our brand-new handy-dandy Family-Friendly Filter!’
Everyone stared. Caine parked his cane between his feet and set his hands one-atop-the-other, clearing his throat with righteous emphasis.
‘Hem. It has come to my attention that you humans do seem have a slight predilection towards the… less-than-savoury side of the dialogue tree at times, and while this establishment will always stand for free speech, an over-reliance on imprecations can lead to needless animosity, hurt feelings, severe emotional trauma, and general… ickyness, unbecoming of the spirit of this splendiferous Circus.’
He held up a declaratory finger. ‘From now on, any no-no words will be replaced in real-time by this visually and aurally pleasing Profanity Patch. Bubble, a further demonstration?’
‘████ ████████████, ██████ ██████ ████ █ ███████-██████ ██████,’ said Bubble, immediately and with great relish.
‘I- ah- that- uh, that was very thorough, Bubble,’ said Caine, weakly. ‘Good job. Uh- so! This way, you can all savour your sailor-mouths and exercise your execrations ‘til the cows come home, and nobody else has to hear a word of it. And now, speaking of cows-’
‘Caine!’ Queenie broke in, pushing forwards. ‘Never mind all this. Where is Scratch?’
‘SCRATCH,’ exploded Caine, at a completely unprecedented volume that dislocated both of his eyeballs and made them all jump, ‘IS- fine. He’s fine! He’s just, ah… resting! Right now. He’s taking a well-earned sabbatical. Cellar. In the- uh- a- ce- a cellar sabbatical. A cellarbatical! Yes, and, who knows! He may even return in a future episode!’
‘What?!'
'What does that even mean?'
'There's a cellar?'
The voices of the others swelled and merged, a rising clamour of protest and confusion. Kinger couldn’t understand a word. He felt, suddenly, as if everything was happening on the other side of a filter, a thickening barrier of curdled cotton-wool.
He stared. He could do nothing else. Breathless, voiceless, he stared, and a shard of dreadful understanding sank into the back of his mind. A black splinter, cruel and complete, he felt it bite deep and ebb outwards in a bitter tide, freezing and numbing. His pupils dwindled, and his hands went limp, as if the phantom links he had now instead of arms could barely hold them to his sides.
He looked up, and his horrified eyes met Caine's.
A split second, less than a heartbeat of awful sync, and then-
'As I was saying!’ Caine backflipped away, up towards the stage’s high proscenium arch. He flung out his arms, conductor to a cavalcade of horseshoe-textured letters that tumbled up behind him, a triple-tiered tangle of clippedy-clopping steel.
‘Today's adventure is the Rowdy! Rodeo! Roundup! Yessiree, can’t stand around all day jabbing our jaws when there’s five hundred head of wild cattle to wrassle out there on the Ol’ Frontier! Now, I’ve been working on these lasso physics for weeks, so sharpen your spurs, fill up your ten-gallons, and let’s get them dogies movin’! YEEE-HAAAAW!!’
He snapped his fingers. A portal twirled open at Kinger’s back, its shimmering surface rippling with bands of deep tan and dusty orange. Before any of them could even start to turn, the long coiling loop of a lasso sailed out through the swirling noise. It dropped true as a dime, snagging all six of the little group and hitching them together around their various middles in a single squashed bunch.
Tightening, the line ran out of slack and yanked them straight off their feet, tails and bases, wrenching them all backwards through the oval of fractal noise, which promptly vanished with an undramatic vworp.
Silence settled across the marquee.
Caine sagged, swiping the back of his hand across his top teeth in theatrical relief. ‘Yeeesh! Charles Walworth Babbage, that was a close one. Be honest, Bubble… you think they suspected anything?’
‘No way!’ said Bubble, who was floating gently upside-down like a fairground goldfish. ‘You killed him, boss!’
‘Seriously, ‘cause I thought for sure they…’ Caine squinted. ‘What?’
‘You killed it, boss!’
‘Hah!’ barked Caine, going slightly wall-eyed with the force of his own laugh as he spun in place. ‘Durn right I did! Put it there, pardner!’
He held up a splayed palm, and Bubble bopped right-way-up and slapped it with a swift sticky splatch of his tongue.
‘But, just in case…’
Caine hunched over, cupping his hands together tight at his chest, then straightened out with a small grunt of effort. A little sphere, only just bigger than a king marble, turned between his palms, inky and inert. He eyed it suspiciously, stuck out his tongue in petty distaste, then spun it between his fingers up into one hand, over-under-over with the fluidity of a veteran contact juggler.
Slipping it between thumb and forefinger, he held it up over Bubble’s ever-grinning maw.
‘Whooooo wants a super-tasty memory to repress?’
Bubble bobbed and jittered underneath, tongue lolling, rippling in barely-contained excitement. ‘Ooh! Ooh! Me! Me! Me!’
‘Say ahh.’
‘Bleaaaaaaahhhhhh.’
Caine tossed the sphere in an easy arc. Bubble hinged the whole needlesharp anglerfish array of his fangs wide open and caught it with a clop, swallowing it whole. A satisfied lick or two, a single noisome fritz that juddered through his see-through shape, and then his mouth yawed open again, lifting his flat little eyes half-closed.
‘Mm-mm-mmm! Spicy.’
‘Attaboy. And that takes care of that,’ said Caine, dusting off his hands. ‘Now, that’s quite enough housekeeping for one day. Since this is my first rodeo, it wouldn’t do to miss the opening act! Let’s go grab a seat!’
‘Yip eee kye yay,’ droned Bubble, atonally, twitching. Caine straightened his bowtie, snatched his cane out of the air, and the two of them twisted widdershins into nothing.
–NOW–
The doors that led into Caine’s office had never really been functionally connected to the basket of a hot-air balloon, or a snaking funhouse slide, or even a blank and empty antechamber created with the sole purpose of presenting them as a Super-Secret Extra-Special End-Goal. For almost as long as they had existed, they had been connected to nothing at all, because while Caine liked doors- their potential and their promise, the infinite variety of fun things you could put on the other side- to a being that could be anywhere they wanted just by deciding to go, they were about as useful as a candyfloss doorknocker.
Things were different, these days. The doors roamed about the Circus, and sometimes they went away, but by and large whenever they were needed they could be relied upon to be nearby. For the humans, they opened the way to the worldspheres, whenever a way was wanted. For Caine, it was harder to say what they stood for, but he had been using them more and more, as time went on.
Their double red-and-blue panels swung open, and Caine skimmed inside. The aquarium bathed the office’s lower lobby in soft silver-blue light, painting his wavering silhouette across the dappled floor. He was singing to himself.
‘-and it’s root, root, root for the home team-’
The stairs to the main floor curved in two mirrored flights, one on either side of the tall watery cylinder of glass, bordered by twin slopes of polished hardwood. Caine liked cubic curves, too, and helices, and things that did not have corners. It stood to reason that if there had to be stairs (offices had stairs) there should also be a slide. Granted, he didn’t actually need stairs any more than he needed doors, and the points of his feet barely brushed the steps as he glided speedily upwards, but yet again, it was the look of the thing that mattered.
Had mattered.
‘-if we don’t win, it’s a shaaaaaame…’
The ranks of worldspheres glowed softly as he passed, trailing shredded grass, swapping a crumpled baseball cap for his own hat as he replaced it above his teeth, his left hand still lost in a big leather-laced catcher’s mitt. He drew it off as he reached the desk, holding it close. Atop their pedestals the good shapes turned, stony and solemn, flanking the trophy cabinet that climbed shelf by shelf up towards the stars.
‘’Cause it’s one! Two! Thuuh-ree strikes, you’re out-’
Caine flitted up to the very apex of his tall wingback chair, lining up an easy overarm dunk on the cabinet, ready to pitch the mitt safely into its new home.
‘At the… old…’
He trailed off.
‘Huh.’
Easier said than done. The cabinet’s ten shadowbox shelves were deep and roomy, and for a very long time, the same ten objects had stood in each, neat and labelled and all alone; the hourglass, the hand, the scales, the clawfoot pincushion et al. They were all still there, somewhere, but now they were rooming with a crowded derangement of other things, new things, stashed everywhere there was a gap.
Rolled-up blueprints filled at least three and a half of the spaces outright. A drawing studio with a huge slanted skylight, a better lakeside lookout with the slide swapped out for a breezy space to chill, a sprawling turn-of-the-century brownstone for Pomni to explore, these manifest representations of new ideas were remarkable, because they were not all wholly his.
Another space overflowed with a tightly-wadded patchwork quilt, which didn’t fit at all and had unrolled its soft squares almost to the floor, next door to a jumble of flashlights and the long spindle of a rolled-up projector screen. Gangle’s drawings, carefully collated with coloured ribbons. A jaunty little paper cocktail umbrella, a vial of seeds, green and soft-glowing, a surreal bee inked on a paper serviette and signed (begrudgingly) with a stylized Z. A jar of fireflies from Kinger’s stargazing field, hanging from the crooked bamboo pole of a butterfly net. Treasured things, poked with care but not much categorisation into every available space; somehow, at some point while he wasn’t paying attention, his archive had become an archiven’t.
Caine hovered, mitt trailing. He rubbed the back of his jaws, eyes flicking from shelf to shelf, as if he could make a space just by looking hard enough.
‘Getting kind of… cluttered in here.’
Of course, anything could go into the vast intangible storage of the paraphernalia engine, but that wasn’t the point. These things were here because he wanted them to be, all of them, all so important in a way he couldn’t entirely define. And if not entirely being able to define things wasn’t quite the world-wrecking worry it used to be, well… so much the better.
Struck by a flash of inspiration, he flipped from the top of the chairback and dove eagerly floorwards, to the carved wooden drawers that marched in a staggered array down both sides of his desk. He pulled the very top drawer open with a great deal of confidence, only to find a nested set of fifty-five small bronze bees, retired sisters of the pair that lived on the desktop. Drawer number two was no better, a spillikins scramble of pencils, coloured pens, and an 8-ball that said, Probably not.
Rubber bugs, a billion black bowties, polite applause. A rainbow of many-sided dice, rattling together like the pebbles of a crystal beach, a sturdy grapnel with its own coil of rope, a slosh of saltwater and the tip of a curious tentacle that he swatted back and boosted hastily shut. He had almost reached the floor now, the lowest drawer of all.
He tugged it open, and stopped, confused.
At first glance it didn’t really look like a drawer at all. It was as if some contrarian carpenter had swung by and fitted a flat top neatly across the space, or tucked the box of another drawer perfectly inside, blocking off the interior and leaving it almost flush with the drawer above. Across the woodgrain, the words DO NOT OPEN had been scrawled in thick red crayon, the letters jagged, emphatic, and unnecessarily large.
‘Little, uh, ominous there, past me,’ said Caine. He closed the drawer, hesitated, opened it again. This time, the letters read, NOTHING TO SEE HERE.
He frowned, his upper teeth clambering stubbornly down over his eyes. The mitt forgotten, everything forgotten now beyond this frustrating new riddle, he closed the drawer, opened it, again, again, again.
OCCUPADO.
NOPE!
GO AWAY!!
ABSOLUTELY PROHIBITED!!!
He shot the drawer shut with a cross backhand whap. ‘Well- that probably doesn’t apply to me.’
He opened it again.
YES, CAINE, THIS DEFINITELY DOES APPLY TO YOU.
Caine made a noise. He had worked himself up into the air above the drawer in a mad little hoop, like a terrier baffled by a grounded rat. He shut it, opened it again.
DON’T SAY I DIDN’T WARN YOU.
Shut. Pause. Open.
IDIOT.
Caine’s voice bounced up into the glassy rafters. ‘AAALLright! That’s IT!’
He slammed the drawer so hard that up on the desktop the golden halfshell of his seeing-eye construct shivered and sparked, and one of the bronze bees overturned with a ringing clatter.
‘I have lost quite enough games for one day. I am not losing to a disrespectful desk.’
He yanked the drawer open, one more time.
And after all, it was nothing. Barely anything at all, just a little black sphere, the size of a big marble, lying inert at the very bottom of the drawer, sullen and dull. Caine squinted at it, itching his front incisor, perplexed.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Really? That… whole production, just for an old Bubble snack? I thought I already found all of these.’
He gave himself a brisk shake, and reached out. ‘Well, anyway, you certainly don’t need to be hanging around out here. Let’s just get you properly reintegrated, and-’
His fingers brushed the surface of the little sphere.
-zzzwchh kk k k skkrr krr rrr RUINED EVERYTHING-
A bolt of fearful sound and fury, black and snapping, a powerful crack of livid energy which knocked his hand away and threw him back against the base of the cabinet. The sphere shot out of the drawer, its surface alive and spiking, thrashing.
Like an overwound, scream-powered pinball, it whickered between the desk, cabinet and wall in a fusillade of wild rebounds before clearing the desktop and arcing away. Caine, who had balled up like a hedgehog with his arms folded over his jaws, parted a couple of teeth just in time to notice a very unfortunate point.
The double-doors were still ajar.
‘Whuh- wait- no no no no nonoyouCAN’T-’
Caine clawed up onto the desktop, skidding and scrambling, and hurled headlong into the air on its tail, a red-and-white bolt of pure panic fighting to outstrip the blazing black dot as it flew. With no time to even think of a grab, he powered straight down the stairs and into the doors, slamming against them shoulder-first with a tooth-rattling thump and driving them shut, a nanosecond before the sphere pinged off and rebounded back into the room. He snatched at it, but at a touch-
-i ii t t LITTLE FUCKING MONSTER-
-he gasped and recoiled and it spat black sparks and took on a second wind, zipping from wall to wall, ricocheting back and forth from the vaulted span of the roof to the long radiant lines of the floor, sounding out a ghastly off-key solo of pings and cracks and whistles as it zigzagged through the air and smacked against glass and wood and bronze. The worldspheres trembled in their cubbies along the walls and Caine tumbled into a reckless pursuit, snatching the catcher’s mitt from the desk as he went.
What ensued was the single most manic game of tag the Circus had ever seen, and the bar was high. The little sphere was a rabid blur, Caine no less speedy and a great deal more desperate. Trying to anticipate its chaotic course, he worked ahead of it, side to side, herding, driving it back, blocking it from smashing into the worldspheres with the frantic dexterity of a goaltender in a sudden-death shootout.
Thwarted, it sang back at last across the entire length of the gallery, thwocked off the banister above the doors, and tore straight as a bullet towards the trophy cabinet. Caine saw it coming and threw himself backwards in a last-ditch stretch, and the sphere buried itself in his mitt, barely an inch from the fireflies’ gentle glow.
Teeth hitched in a breathless snarl, he spiked it viciously downwards, straight back into the depths of the bottom drawer. He dove after it, grabbed the handle, braced to slam it shut-
-and stopped.
Stopped, and, slow as a sleepwalker, sank floorwards. The furious energy ebbed from his shoulders, from his clenched gloves and hitched-up feet, and he dropped quietly down until he was kneeling, staring down into the drawer. Under the fretful arch of his upper teeth his wide, worried eyes followed every tiny motion of the sphere as it jittered against the bare wood; an ugly, dismal little thing, spiking and spasming.
For a while he stayed stuck, deadlocked by an inner conflict, suspended in place just like the jar of fireflies circling in their endless soft loop-de-loops, the good shapes turning at his back.
Bubble snacks. Things you put away. Things you can’t feel. This is why you do this, so you can know them and not know them, you can put them at arms’ length and you never have to touch them ever again, touching them feels like the world caving in and why would you want to deal with that? Why would anyone want to deal with that ever?
It was Pomni that answered him, then. She spoke from another place in his head, a shady wildflower evening, crickets and shattered marble and her quiet, inexorable good sense.
Because then it doesn't get dealt with, Caine, so it's just gonna keep happening. Is that what you want?
He reached out again.
No confidence now, no curiosity, nothing left to power him but a dragging, compulsive dread. Cringing like a child reaching out to a rat-trap, shoulders drawn up tight against his gums, squinting through the barest splinter of a gap in his side-teeth as if not being able to see what he was doing could somehow make it easier, Caine reached towards the little sphere. Inch by shaky inch, pulling back, creeping closer, closer, and then with a final wrench of will his hand shot out and closed around it, squeezed it tight.
A jagged black halo, a bombardment of distorted sound. Sharpening, warping, stuttering in and out of phase, it swelled around him until it became the whole world.
And the world said;
‘Well, sure I will, Scratch! If it’ll make you happy!’
'Caine, I swear on my grave, absolutely nothing in the entire universe could possibly make me happier, okay?'
-fzzchchhhzhzhwwwhhzhh-
'-exactly what I tell you. Do not deviate from my instructions in any way whatsoever, you got that?'
-zzcchhffffwwwzzzzchhhzz-
'-okay, okay, hold on- Jesus, it's so hard to- okay, not those, back up a second, I have to figure this-'
-chhzzchh-
'-said leave that alone! How hard is it to just do what I tell you?? Listen to me, will you just fucking-’
-zwzk-
-see the problem now! See, right here, all of this pesky corruption. Let me just tidy that right up for you-’
‘Wait! No! What- what did you just do? Where's- I can't- I can't- oh, God- no no no don't fucking touch anything else you crazy piece of shit what have you DONE??’
'It's- uh- I wasn’t- no, wait, no, it's okay! It’s okay, I’ll- I’ll just put it back, I can fix-'
-crKKK KzK kk-
‘God! Aah, God, it h- it hurts! What’s- what’s happening? What’s happening make it stop make it STOP!!’
‘I- I- I’m trying! I don’t know why it isn’t working! Your file-’
‘-ah God- my head- you- YOU!! You did this to me! You- aAH! you- ruined- EVERYTHING, you little- fucking- MONSTER, why c cc couldn’t you just!! LISTEN?!? Kinger- anyone- please ss s someone fffuckin g Hhh HHE HH E ELP m m mmMe EEEee- – - -’
‘...Scratch?’
A juddering explosion, shredding soundwaves and rancid bits, bursting outwards, filling the office and stamping his shadow small and shrinking against the far wall, like the victim of a pyroclastic blast. Radiating, churning swirls, livid concentric bands of magenta, violet, blazing orange, boiling lime. Caine reached out with both hands, blind, desperate, whether to avert or deny or plead or protect he had no clear idea, and the thicket of furious spines fought and stabbed and stung and popped.
Everything fell still.
Caine’s tight-clenched teeth parted, just a fraction. His breath fluttered through the gap, escaping in a series of thin, ragged little huffs.
Speak-and-spells and Rubix cubes, blueprints and keepsakes. The things he had now, the real things, were far more important than any pretty trophy, and infinitely more breakable. That Zooble had said, good to have you back. That Pomni had said, you get to mess up, nobody’s going to…
Sometimes, it really felt as if they wanted him there, with them. With them. Sometimes, it really felt as if they weren't even afraid of him at all.
This is why they should be.
They don’t need a console to shut you out, to make a wall and put you on the other side. To look at you, and know you too well, and put you away.
This fragile, firefly peace, this brave new world. No more secrets- oh, so easy to say, when the secrets were so many faded flashcards parked in your back pocket, like spark-notes scribbled down by a stranger. Bubble snacks. Knowing what happened through an airy divide, no need to be troubled by the experience, the sheer apocalyptic depth of his failure, the way it had felt.
The bottom drawer stood open. It was quite empty, besides a few spare black slivers, dry and papery like the shell of an old, old egg, or the sloughed skin of some withered, long-dead seed.
Caine pushed it shut, so gently that it didn’t even click as it slid home. Bit by bit, he scootched backwards until he was entirely under the desk, tucked out of sight in the deep recess between the drawers.
The office settled down into silence. The stars shone patiently down through the arch of glass, a slow-wheeling tapestry of nonsense constellations. In their neat rows the worldspheres turned, small motes of light looping their untroubled surfaces. The catcher’s mitt lay on the floor at the foot of the trophy cabinet, flopped softly open like a hi-five left hanging.
After a while, a single white-gloved hand bipped out from under the desk, snatched it up, and whisked back into the dark.