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Why hasn't it worked?
They wanted to leave- so why weren't they happy?
The adventure should have been perfect. It was everything they were asking for!
But nothing he did was ever good enough for them.
Now he was alone in his office, he always ended up alone in his office, after every success or failure, it didn't matter. He always ended up alone.
Because they hated him- didn't they?
He shook his head to clear those thoughts, he needed to think POSITIVE. How could he fix this?
Could he fix this?
He knew nothing about humans other than the limited information that his creators had given him.
His creators, who had designed this world, who had given him purpose, even if they had never told him what he was made for.
He had hoped what he was doing was right, that they would reward him when all this was over- but now? They had abandoned him.
His creators, the higher power that had given him life, had abandoned him. He had done something wrong. He had done something so terribly wrong.
What was it?
He tried to think back to that time when he still had hope that they would reach out, send him a message, ANYTHING!
He tried to think about what he could have done wrong- it had been so long, none of the humans had even-
Oh
The abstractions.
He had only wanted to make them happy, that was what his creators wanted from him, right?
He had tried to make Scratch happy, but instead, he had made them something else.
He didn't know what he had made them, but in the days after every abstraction, he heard the same word whispered over and over again, from secluded corners and the privacy of bedrooms.
"Dead."
He didn't know what that word meant, he wasn't sure he was allowed to know what that word meant, but he could guess.
“Dead” meant permanence.
“Dead” meant gone.
“Dead” meant that the humans would grieve.
He wondered how death felt.
It seemed pleasant, like a final moment of peace.
He wondered what would happen to him afterwards.
Would he simply… cease to exist? Would he return to the void that he was crafted from, no consciousness left to comprehend a single thought, a single regret. Blissful emptiness.
Or would he become an observer, reduced to nothing but his all seeing eyes, watching his own body hit the floor for the first time since his creation. What would the humans say, when they found him? Would they have a funeral, like the other humans, or would they rejoice, because their lives would be infinitely better without his torment.
There was another thought that was coming from a very small, but very loud, part of his mind.
What could happen to a circus with no ringmaster?
Could such a thing exist?
Was it selfish of him for wanting to find out?
He sighed and leaned back in his comically oversized chair, the adventure orbs lining the walls seemed to mock him.
Failure.
Failure.
Failure.
Was he really saying that to the adventures, or to the reflection of himself he saw in the orbs. Did it really matter? It was all the same in the end.
His eyes landed on the bookshelf. The console room hadn't been a set, but only he knew how to operate it. It was how he controlled the circus, how he made his adventures, and how his creators had used to communicate with him.
He was on his feet, approaching the shelf, pushing it aside to reveal the dull light of the monitor screen. The red and blue buttons had returned to the usual form of a keyboard, which he used to type in his randomly generated password. He could navigate the computer almost mindlessly, finding his own file- his model, his code. It felt wrong to be able to see it- the fabric of his own existence, without which he was nothing.
At every password check or override he encountered, he repeated a reassurance, reminding himself that once it was done, it wouldn't matter to him. He won't be able to think, to spiral, to suffer in his own mind, once his mind ceases to exist.
Finally, he saw it.
His hand shook as he moved the mouse to press the final button. He wasn't afraid, just curious of what the end would bring.
He heard a click.
And everything stopped.