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"So you say you spoke to Jax? While he was abstracted?"
Pomni nodded, then cringed as her body glitched. "He was in there, sort of. I don't think he's actively conscious though. I think it's like... that thing with the forest and the trees?"
The other three shared a worried look; there had been some whispered discussions earlier about the possibility of Pomni living the rest of her digital life with this perma-glitching and the ramifications that could bring. Kinger searched his weary mind.
"You mean... the theory of sound?"
Pomni smiled, her teeth clenched against the pain. "Yeah, I think that's it. Like, a tree falls in a forest, creates a sound wave but if no one's there to hear it was there a sound at all? I think it's like that. Nothing really exists until its observed."
Kinger hummed. He'd never really thought too deeply about the Abstractions and the possibility of their consciousness before. Granted, he hadn't thought about anything all that deeply in years. He'd never thought he'd be grateful to lose his mind, but he had to admit it had its perks.
Caine's return to the circus had slowly, but determinedly smoothed over the remaining bumps in their infinite road, and everything felt like it had relaxed under this new structure. Kinger kept the bucket off most of the time and allowed the shiny fragments of his mind to consume him, but for all their bright and sparkling future there were still gaps where the darkness called to him. Night time, adventures in the dark, sitting in the aquarium and staring staring staring...
Kinger had been sitting here for what felt like days. Maybe it was days in the real world. Watching her twist back and forth in the water. Watching her thrive—
She was thriving. That was what he told himself, that was what he had to tell himself. Like she was some kind of animal, some mindless thing when he knew deep down in his chest where all his unwanted emotions twisted and churned, he KNEW—
"Nothing really exists until its observed."
But what if Pomni was wrong. What if—
What if what if what if. It kept him up at night. It ate away at him like no thought ever had. He hadn't slept in days. He felt like he was in his twenties again, stubble clinging to his cheeks and staring at the blinding light of a computer screen as twitching lines of code ran past. Caine's early days. He'd stay up all night counting dots and numbers until he had a migraine. Until She appeared and wrapped a blanket around his slumped shoulders, or pressed a mug of tea into his hand-
"I don't deserve you."
She smirked and kissed his cheek.
Kinger raised a hand (detached and fleeting like everything he'd come to know) and touched his face. Smooth wood. Was there anything human left to touch?
He looked out again, to the glowing lights across the water.
If a tree falls in a forest but there's nobody around...
Fuck it.
Kinger stood up so fast it felt more like the bench he'd been sitting on had fallen away. Everything had fallen away. The circus was a black void as he moved through it, sprinting like a moth for a flame toward those glowing lights in the distance.
Nothing exists until its observed.
Kinger had been conjuring within the circus for the better chunk of thirty years. Ripping open the glass wall of the aquarium was child's play, as easy as tearing away a butterfly's wings. It felt so freeing that he conjured glass shards too, and they twinkled around him like starlight.
The abstractions he swam past didn't pay him much mind, but he still moved quickly through the inky water. Abstractions didn't love the light and he wanted to get to her before he started glowing.
Her-
He'd know her anywhere. He could pick her out of any crowd, any chessboard, since the moment he laid eyes on her he'd never wanted to look away. She was watching him as he approached. Did she know who he was? Was she waiting for him, buried inside her own mind?
As he finally reached her and pressed his gloved hands against her rippling body, Kinger realised somewhere deep down inside his chest that it didn't matter to him either way.
The world flashed around him and suddenly he was somewhere else. He was—
Standing on the ringmaster's stage and touching his own body in horror, she was—
Backing away from Caine slowly and asking cautiously if she could speak to her husband because he would know what was going on with this weird programming bullshit—
Being held in his arms, his weird detached hands a mirror of her own, both of them laughing slightly about the weirdness of it all. He was touching her face like he did back when they were flesh, promising to—
She was laughing as they shuffled their way through Caine's adventure that day, watching Scratch argue with Wormo over the undefined rules of the giant board game they were standing on—
She was touching a butterfly and feeling its tiny delicate legs wrap around her finger and suddenly she was sobbing because butterflies didn't do that in the real world and maybe she'd never hold a real butterfly again—
Kinger was standing outside the door to his room (separate rooms, it was like they were a young couple visiting her parents house again) whispering back and forth to Scratch. Scratch hissed something in reply, practically snarling. She wasn't close enough to hear what. She leaned a little further out the doorway and his eyes widened as he saw her—
The circus flashed around her in a nauseating whirl of colour as she ran for her life from the thing that had once been Scratch, this awful ugly black blob that was shrieking and gaining on her and—
It hurt it hurt it hurt until Caine snapped his fingers and suddenly it didn't hurt anymore—
She was pressed into Kinger's side beneath the stars as digital fireflies bobbed up and down in the air around them and digital grass prickled against their backs and holding him as he cried over Scratch and over... everything really. She—
A Christmas themed adventure this time. She had no idea if the dates matched up to the ones in the real world or if Caine was just going off a theme, but she didn't care. All she could think about was that it had been January when she put that headset on and—
Kinger was wearing some stupid fake beard and trying to make her laugh and for a horrible moment she wanted to rip it off his face and shove him away—
Caine was closing up the cellar after plunging Wormo into its depths and when she asked if he was okay, he glitched and dissappeared—
She was tossing water back and forth, up to her waist in digital ocean as someone suggested they do a chicken fight—
She was tumbling off his back, still giggling as she sank into the water. She had no lungs to draw it in with, no way to drown. She stared up at the light as it rippled and fractured—
She watched as the cellar opened once more—
Caine was fidgeting with his top hat as he mumbled through his fragmented memories of the real world. She hadn't known what to expect when she asked. She gently touched his shoulder when he mentioned how long he had been trapped and forced to watch the world move on for. Out the corner of her eye she saw Kinger approaching, slowly—
The adventure was a goddamn disaster and not even Caine could tear them apart. The stupid AI kids they'd been tasked with raising were all gone anyway, not that it had ever mattered, they'd never be able to do it now in this stupid digital prison, never see them off on their first day of kindergarten, never drive them to college or walk them down the aisle at their wedding—
Caine's couples therapy adventure was the worst one yet. She glared at Kinger and he glared back as she suggested he could stick his sci-fi headset up his ass next time—
The cellar opened and closed again and again and again—
They were sitting in silence beneath the stars as the fireflies buzzed around them. His hand was in hers and neither of them could think of a single thing to say—
She had to try a few times to get his attention. He was zoning out a lot these days. Before she'd even finished talking he was back to complimenting the digital textures of their meatloaf—
She watched as he chattered with the cute little AI knights. Apparently they have to slay a dragon. He looks so happy, lost in this make believe. Maybe—
The colours were blurring around her. It's so bright. The circus is so bright. He—
He was in the middle of a thick black ocean. He was drowning, choking on water so thick and dark it was like oil. Kinger tore his eyes open as he flailed, searching for—
There she was. Beautiful and glowing and whole. Staring at him from across the water and suddenly he didn't need to breathe.
Only a few pulls of his body against water and he was there. With her again, their hands sliding together like a jigsaw, perfectly sculpted.
"Darling?" He breathed. "Queenie?"
She opened her eyes. How did she have the most beautiful eyes? They shone like two rings of quartz, two moons in the night's sky.
"Destiny?"
She stared back at him, then...
Her hands stiffened against his.
"You," She breathed like she could hardly believe it.
"You," she whispered like she wasn't sure what she was seeing.
"You," she said, the same way she'd said it when she realised this was all his fault.
"You, you you you-" each time she repeated the syllable it twisted with a new emotion, a new fragment that dug into his wooden chest like a sawblade. Like a broken clock she repeated the word and he clung to her like a lighthouse "You you you you you you—"
You did this to me you did this to me you did this-
"Kinger!"
"Oh my god oh my god—"
"I got him, I think, be careful!
"Shit!"
Kinged screamed as the world tore itself open and bright light flooded into every crevice. The hauntingly beautiful black ocean withered and evaporated as light poured into his eyes and became all he could see. He couldn't see her, he couldn't see it he couldn't—
Pain. Pain sank into his body like the teeth of a gnat and it just kept going. Crawling through his limbs, taking the place of his veins and all his organs, taking root of his very reality and ripping it apart at the seams. Kinger arched his back and screamed. His body felt like it was on fire.
Queenie? Where did she go?
"Kinger!" Between the light, which scorched like the third layer of the sun, he could see flashes of the world around him. The checkerboard floor, playroom walls and the blue and red stripes of Pomni's shorts. She was shouting, they all were. "Kinger, please you need to breathe!"
Did he? Fat lot of good it had ever done him.
"Caine!" That was Zooble, and they sounded frantic. "You need to hurry up—"
"I'm trying!" Kinger's eyes drifted open again and he caught sight of the little ringmaster hovering above the floor and snapping his fingers again and again. "I'm trying, it's not working!"
"Oh my god his eyes!"
Every thought in his head was screaming all at once. He was in too much pain to move, his body was glitching back and forth with chunks zapping out of place. Is that what she has felt when—
Her body tearing itself apart? Her mind tearing itself apart?
And where the hell had he been?
Kinger choked on a mixture of a sob and a scream as the lights span around him. Everything was meshing together into a blurry pattern. It was so peaceful down there in the dark. So unburdened. He could just be. He could be with her. He wanted—
"Kinger, please!" Pomni's voice was unsteady. "We can't lose you too!"
She was down there somewhere, calling out to him. He could almost feel it. The song pulling him down to the farthest corner of his mind where reality couldn't follow. Who needed reality?! It was as easy as taking her hand...
But she didn't have hands anymore.
That thing, that beautiful creature, it wasn't her anymore. It was just a jumble of her memories, all centered around whatever conscious thoughts she'd had left when she—
She was gone. She was really truly gone. Not even the other abstractions in the tank got to be with her anymore.
Kinger tore his digital lungs open and took a breath. It slammed into him like a wave and he coughed, gasped and writhed. The glitching felt like it was tearing him apart as he took in another breath, then another. Some of the light around him faded and he realised, with a bitter chuckle in the back of his mind, that it had been him glowing from the lack of oxygen. He grimaced and breathed again and again until he could bear it.
Up in the sky Caine snapped his fingers one more time and suddenly— nothing. His body was his own again and he could breathe like normal. Kinger let out a startled noise and sat up.
No more glitching. No more abstraction. He looked around. He was on the main floor of the tent with no soothing darkness to shield him. He assumed whatever hole he'd torn in the wall of the aquarium had been patched.
When he looked back, it was with a heavy heart. The five of them were crowded around him with wide eyes and trembling breath. He didn't even have a moment to try and think of what to say before Pomni threw her arms around his neck.
Kinger held her and let her sob into his chest as he tried to piece himself back together. He'd tried to... well he wasn't quite sure what he'd tried to do. See her? Talk to her? God, it was so ridiculous he wanted to laugh. She was gone, long gone. She was out there in the real world with the real Grant and he— he didn't deserve her.
Kinger gently squeezed Pomni. "I'm sorry," he mumbled. "All of you, sorry for scaring you like that."
Ragatha and Gangle both looked like they were on the verge of tears too, Gangle more so that's usual. Zooble had one arm around her ribbon shoulders and their other hand was pressed into their forehead. "I... fuck Kinger. What were you thinking?"
"Were you thinking?" Ragatha asked gently. "You never usually put yourself in danger but-"
"No, it's uh, not that." Kinger cringed. He knew he wasn't 'functional' at the best of times but even now he was struggling to find the words. "I just... I don't know."
Pomni sat back and sniffed, wiping her eyes and mumbled "sorry" under her breath. Ragatha tucked an arm around her shoulders and Kinger's heart just about shattered.
Above them, Caine was twisting his coat tails back and forth in his clenched fists. "I'm sorry!" He stammered. "I— I wanted to fix you earlier, I swear, but it wouldn't— there must be some stupid glitch with my code but I can fix it, I can—"
"It's not your fault Caine," Kinger exhaled. Every breath hurt, it felt like a bowling ball was digging into his chest and pressing deeper and harder every time he tried to speak. "I was the problem, I just... I don't know."
Everything was silent for a painful, painful minute. Kinger ran a hand back and forth over his own shoulder. It didn't help in any way it just... felt like the right thing to do.
She's gone, the silence reminded him. She's gone and there's no way to get her back. She's gone and its your fault.
"Kinger?" Pomni spoke so quietly he almost missed it under the force of his own thoughts. "Were you trying to talk to your wife the same way I spoke to Jax?"
Hearing his desires laid out so literally made him cringe. It sounded so silly now. So cartoonish... hah. Isn't that ironic?
"It didn't work," he said quickly. "She's not... I'm guessing Jax was only coherent because he abstracted so recently. She's not... it didn't work." His shoulders slumped further than they were already. It was amazing, he didn't think he had any further to fall. Like a tree falling at the feet of a witness, he'd finally pushed the truth out into the air.
You did this to her.
"And then after?" He looked up at the sound of Zooble's voice. They were staring at him in a way that made his stomach twist into knots. "When you were glitching out and Caine couldn't get you to stop? And your eyes, they were glowing like—"
"Like abstractions," Gangle finished. Zooble nodded.
"I..." Kinger searched for words. All of them had vanished along with his will to go and find them. "I dont know." He sighed. "I just... I don't know."
He didn't want to look at their faces. Each one was carved into such a horrible picture of worry and it made him sick to think what he could have done to them. Losing Jax was bad enough. This was an era of hope. They all needed to stick together.
Caine was still twisting his coat tails back and forth. Ragatha caught him by the wrist like a child catching a balloon and gently tugged him down to the floor to sit with them. They sat in the silence. All six of them. Kinger knew he should think of something to say, something to reassure them. But he was just so tired.
The light buzzed in his brain like moths circling a lantern.
*-*-*
The next couple of days were... interesting. It had clearly been decided while his back was turned that he was on the equivalent of digital suicide watch. Of course, whenever he asked if that was what they were up to, they would laugh or force an "of course not" through their teeth, and tell him that they were just enjoying the pleasures of his company.
He... sure whatever. He was too exhausted to disagree, and what was the alternative? He liked watching Gangle draw or exploring new corners of the circus with Pomni or practicing conjuring with Ragatha.
Those were the moments he could remember, anyhow. The daytime had returned and with it the frantic shield of his daytime-brain. It was never bliss, losing himself like that, but it did etch some relief onto those stressed and tired faces. The Kinger of the old days was back, and with him the whimsical silliness of everything the circus had pretended to be. They could all pretend together and somehow everything felt like it was going to be okay.
But the night would always return. Weeks ago Kinger and Caine had locked the whole tent onto a circadian rhythm to give them all a sense of peace and that time was moving forward. Kinger noticed pretty quickly that they slept in shifts. There would always be someone hanging out in his room or wandering around with him after hours, a chattering voice to fill the space where his practical mind should be.
It was nice of them. Truly, if a little embarrassing. He felt like an old man who couldn't be trusted to wander to the shops by himself. But then again, hadn't he proved that he couldn't be trusted? Hadn't he let them down?
You did this to her.
His heart was a cold aching lump in his chest.
Tonight, Gangle had been up late with him in his room explaining the plot for the latest chapter of her manga. They'd had a pretty funny discussion about the rubber duck method and how it worked for writers and coders alike, and Kinger had sat patiently and listened until she started to yawn.
She hadn't meant to fall asleep and she'd probably feel awful about it when she woke up, but Kinger just wanted to let her rest. She'd been so stressed since... everything. They all had.
After tucking a spare blanket around her shoulders, the room suddenly felt too tight to breathe, so Kinger had slipped away.
He hadn't meant to venture to the aquarium. After so long it was just where his (metaphorical) feet took him. Down the steps towards the darkness. It was almost soothing, almost but not quite. But Kinger didn't know where else to go.
The abstractions were flashing beyond the water and lit up the room in soft shades of magenta and deep blue. The hole in the glass had indeed been repaired, no funny Kinger-shaped outlines to be found, but... As he looked at it, Kinger still remembered what it had felt like to smash through. What it felt like—
"Uh... hey there Kinger?"
Kinger blinked. He hadn't realised it but his body had moved towards the glass and he was standing so close he could press a hand against it. He didn't. Instead he turned around. Caine was perched on the bench, awkwardly tapping his fingers together. He looked uncomfortable in a way Caine often did these days. Guilty and on edge, like at any moment he'd be asked to leave.
Kinger sighed and took a seat before patting the bench beside him. Caine hovered, twisted in the air, but eventually took a seat next to Kinger. The model he used these days was so short that his legs couldn't reach the floor and dangled in the air instead. It was... sort of cute actually, and Kinger bit back a laugh.
"What brings you down here?" He asked instead.
"Oh you know, advanced supercomputers don't need to sleep!" Caine swung his fist before dropping his hands to his lap. "Heh, I thought I'd come check on everyone. All of everyone."
The colours in the tank changed as the abstractions moved, and a cerulean glow lit up Caine's eyes.
"Huh. Do you do that often?"
"Only every now and then," Caine chirped. "You're probably down here more often than me."
Beyond the glass, one of the passing creatures did a loop-the-loop, flashing a rainbow onto the walls. Maybe it was her. Maybe he didn't know anymore, maybe he never had.
"Wowie!" Caine clapped his hands together. "Nice one Kaufmo!"
Kinger looked back. "You can tell them apart?"
Caine blinked. "I... yes. They're still created from the mindscan files, even if the code is corrupted. Can't you—"
"Only her," Kinger answered quickly. Caine made a quiet "ah" noise.
They watched the water together. Abstractions didn't need to sleep and the constant movement was like a soothing nightlight.
"For what it's worth, I miss her too," Caine said. Kinger glanced down at him. "She was my favourite of the first bunch, you know, always helping me out with suggestions, always so nice to everyone. She made everything feel so much better."
"Yeah," Kinger sighed. "She was good at that." He closed his eyes. "She was my light."
A harsh dinging noise cut through the silence. Kinger cracked open an eyelid. Caine was glitching, his right eyeball turned to a fractured rainbow.
"Caine?"
Caine froze, twitched once, then exploded. "I'm sorry! If I hadn't been so focused on my adventures and having fun then maybe she wouldn't—" He grimaced, wringing his hands over and over. The emotions in Kinger's chest twisted like the blade of a knife.
"It wasn't your job to look after her," he muttered. "It was mine. I was her husband! It was my fault she even—" He sighed and pressed his thumbs against his smooth forehead.
"And I was the ringmaster! It was my job to look after everybody and I... failed at that." Caine glanced up at him. "Whether you want to say it or not, I know what it feels like to let down someone you care about."
That... that one hurt. Kinger silently wrapped a hand around Caine's shoulders.
"It gets easier, doesn't it?" His own voice sounded strange as he stared off towards the multicoloured darkness. If she was out there with the others he couldn't tell. Maybe she was avoiding him. He wouldn't blame her, trying to drag her back to sentience when ignorance could be such bliss. "I swear it got easier, or maybe I just got crazier. Either way... there's no going back."
Caine patted his back. Kinger grabbed onto his own eyeballs and squeezed them as hard as he could, but it wasn't enough to stop the tears from trickling down his cheeks. The texture was like wet rubber and he wanted to laugh. God, he wanted so badly to laugh.
Above them came a clatter, the sound of of four sets of legs racing down the stairs. The noise sent a jolt through the room and Kinger loosened his grip. He and Caine turned to watch as four breathless humans tumbled down the staircase, Ragatha first, then Zooble, then Pomni tripped behind them and brought the whole line down in a messy heap. Gangle came last, cautiously stepping around her fallen comrades.
"Kinger!" Pomni scrambled to her feet. "We were looking— are you okay?"
Behind her, Zooble was helping Ragatha up. The doll looked frantic — they all looked frantic. Kinger sighed, he practically deflated. He could still feel Caine's hand resting on his back.
Lying had never done any of them any good.
"No," he said. Pomni's eyes widened and Kinger wanted to stop, but for the first time in years his words felt like his own. The tree was falling and it was bringing down the entire forest with it. "No I- I'm not. I'm sad. About..." He glanced behind him at the glass wall and the world that lay beyond it. "About a lot of stuff really. I miss my wife, I want to be with her in a way, even though I know there's no her left to be with."
They were all watching him with wide haunted eyes, eyes that had already seen too much suffering in their digital lifetimes. Nice going. He sighed and hung his head. "And I'm angry that..." he swallowed. "That things are finally starting to look up around here and she's not here to see it. And with myself for causing all this."
Kinger turned back to the glass. Such a... beautiful endless black void. He moved forward until the darkness was all he could see, save for a few splashes of neon. Finally, he saw her. Out there swimming round and round, her scarlet eyes like a cluster of moons in a sea of stars. Kinger pressed himself against the glass and begged for her to turn his way.
Someone's hand pressed against his shoulder. Kinger felt the tears burning behind his eyes as a sob rose from his gut and tore itself out of his throat. Leaning back away from the glass, he started to cry.
Whatever had been left of him, whatever toothpicks and string he'd been using to hold himself together, all of it shattered. Sob after sob wracked his digital body as he hunched over on the floor and wept, begging whatever was left of her to just look his way.
The hand on his shoulder became two, then three. Zooble quickly wrapped their long arms around him from behind, Pomni rushed in to hug him from the side and Caine wriggled in to press against his waist. All five of them clung to him like lifelines. Kinger was glad they were here, he was glad he wasn't alone but he still couldn't stop the ragged cries escaping his throat or the tears carving lines down his wooden face.
He did this to her. He did this to all of them. He—
"I'm sorry," Kinger gasped in between sobs. "I—" The arms around him tightened.
"It's okay," Gangle said in a small, soft voice. "Or it will be, at least."
Kinger tore his eyes open and blearily looked out at the tank. All he saw was a kaleidoscopic blur of different colurs, swirling and swirling, ready to embrace him. He blinked a few times to get the tears out of his eyes, then he saw something else. A new splotch of colour.
Displayed on the glass was his reflection — their reflections. His miserable bloodshot face, and the five bodies surrounding him, hugging him, grounding him. They had him. That realisation pushed all the emotions out of Kinger's chest in one firm exhale. They were all he had left and... they had him. And he had them. He couldn't leave them with another abstraction-shaped mess to clean up.
Slowly he pressed his face to the glass and kissed it. It hurt like a monster ripping him open to pull away.
If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, does it matter whether or not it made a sound? If a man stays up late, writes a line of code or two, puts on an experimental headset and allows the only thing left that matters to slip away... if no one is left who remembers all of that then does it truly matter?
Here in the darkness it did. Here where the past was fracturing the bliss of the present.
Kinger closed his eyes again and hugged them all back as tightly as he could.
What now?
They took it one step at a time, or one shuffle in Kinger's legless case. Away from the glass, up the stairs. The dark circus tent looming over them like one big shadow. Kinger listened to them whisper to one another, debating where to go next. The blanket fort was ruled out, which he was secretly glad for. He didn't want to see Jax right now, or think about the countless digital hours spent sitting alone in the darkness.
Caine was holding one of his hands, and Gangle was holding the other. That was nice.
They brought him to the couches where they sat. Pomni and Zooble brought hot chocolates down from the cafe. That was nice too.
It was quiet. The silence was a wall his thoughts couldn't penetrate.
That was also nice.
Kinger cleared his throat. "Hey Gangle?" His voice was frail and he sounded as exhausted as he felt, but she smiled at him regardless.
"Yeah?"
"How does that next chapter end?"
Gangle "hmmmm"ed. She was perched on the floor with her head on Zooble's lap. They looked so cosy together, and he felt cosy just looking at them. The cup of hot chocolate was a soothing weight in his lap, and he had Ragatha on one side of him and Pomni on the other. They were little things, but they helped, like small dots of glue slowly piecing him back together.
"I'm not actually sure," Gangle said. "I don't know if it's that important."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah! What's really important right now is the next chapter, that's when things are going to get interesting. The ending's just a bridge."
Kinger leant backwards until the back of his head was pressed against the cushions. "I'm looking forward to it."
"I'm glad!" Gangle chirped. "It'll take a little while, but I can't wait to share it with you guys. I think you're really going to enjoy it."
Kinger hoped so too.