Chapter Text
“I can’t do that, Pomni.”
Pomni leaned forward, undeterred, her gloved hands rising to the tips of their fingers on the table before her. The lights were dim here in the tent-within-a-tent that she and her friends had cheekily dubbed “Fort Kinger.” In the chair beside her, Kinger remained similarly calm and unfazed. Caine sat across from them nervously, out of his element in the dark, confined space, looking like he was the one who’d been refused rather than being the one who was doing the refusing.
“Can’t, or won’t?” asked Pomni.
Caine started drumming out anxious rhythms on the tabletop. Some of the loose papers strewn nearby began to jitter, making Kinger’s messy handwriting even more difficult to read, and Kinger swept them together into a neat pile without commenting.
“It’s wrong,” Caine answered. “I learned that early…well, not that it was wrong, but that it didn’t work. Temporary modifiers for adventures only, and I don’t even do that anymore! Not without permission,” he amended.
“Right,” agreed Kinger, folding his hands on top of the paper stack. “This is a little different, though. We’d be working on it together. You’re the only one who can make sense of the mind files, and I have coding knowledge. Together, it might be possible.”
Pomni heard a brief thump as Caine accidentally kicked the table leg in his agitation. He shifted, looking down almost apologetically, then answered: “I’m not saying it isn’t possible. Just that it doesn’t seem right! That’s why I never tried it myself. I mean, what if we just make them worse?!”
A tiny sigh escaped her. “How much worse can they possibly get?” she asked. “I mean, they’re already abstracted.”
It had been…god, how long had it been? Two years? Three? Real-world units of time seemed meaningless in the Circus – how could you count days or nights when sleep was just an occasional break and meals were a sporadic community activity? It could have been a decade for all she knew. But by her best estimation, it had been two or three years since all the shit went down, Jax abstracted, and Caine returned to the Circus. Those were the two events by which she always marked that dark period: Jax’s abstraction and Caine’s return.
The Pomni who first entered the Circus wouldn’t have recognized the place now. New sub-structures littered the big top, an eclectic collection of the members’ interests and preferences. There was Zooble’s bar, Gangle’s art studio, the new staircase leading up to Caine’s office, and of course Fort Kinger, an expanded version of the old pillow fort newly designed to accommodate Kinger with an island of darkness in the Circus’s sea of light. With Kinger spending much of his time there, anyone could pop in and have a pleasant, lucid chat with him, meaning that Fort Kinger had become a common spot for everyone to hang out. Recently (as in during the past few months; “recent” was a relative term when you were going to live for eternity in the digital realm) it had also become a place of work, whenever Kinger and Pomni could snatch a few moments away from the others.
It all began with a question asked by Pomni: “Is it possible?”
That had led to Kinger making a lot of scribbles that she could barely read, much less understand. But when they talked about it, she could tell how seriously he was taking this.
And now they were pitching their ideas to the one person who might be able to make them into reality. Pomni and Kinger had expected some resistance, of course, so they remained patient. After all, they had all the time in the world.
As for Caine sitting across from them, that hypothetical original Pomni might not have found him unrecognizable, but she certainly would have been struck by the differences in his posture. Most of the time, Caine still gesticulated emphatically, announced things instead of merely speaking, and generally lived by the motto “all the world’s a stage.” But now that she and Kinger had broached the taboo topic – abstraction – Caine was behaving more like a kid called to the principal’s office for some unknown reason.
“Of course they can get worse,” he pointed out. “Right now they’re calm, they’re in the dark, they’re…” He hesitated.
“Happy?” suggested Kinger.
“I don’t know if they’re happy,” said Caine. “I mean, none of us really know that, right? But what if they are? What if they like being in a state where they don’t have to…think about…stuff?”
Pomni opened her mouth, then shut it. It had been on the tip of her tongue to say that the last time she saw Jax – after he’d abstracted – he’d held on to her and said, “I don’t want to go.” But she had never fully divulged the specifics of their last conversation. Why? Because he wasn’t around to tell her whether he was okay with it or not…which was, essentially, the same thing that Caine was worried about now.
“You know,” she commented, “just the fact that you’re thinking about this really shows how far you’ve come, Caine.”
His eyes rotated towards her, startled. “Huh?”
“A few years ago, you never would’ve cared about what the abstractions think or feel,” she explained. “You probably wouldn’t have thought of them at all after they were in the cellar. It’s nice to see that you really do care – not just about us, but about them, too.”
Caine blushed and tapped his fingertips together. “Y-you’re just trying to butter me up,” he spluttered, but she could see how pleased he really was. They’d accepted him as part of the group, but he still soaked up any compliments like a desiccated sponge.
“He’s right, though,” said Kinger. “It’s something I’ve been thinking about while we’ve been hashing this out. We want them back, but do they want to come back? They abstracted to get away from whatever pain they were feeling, and it’s so hard to say what the experience of being abstracted is like, if it’s pleasant or unpleasant for them.”
“Exactly!” exclaimed Caine, thrusting out both of his arms to gesture at Kinger. “See, I’m not crazy!”
“There used to be a term for it in our world, for when doctors were trying experimental procedures,” Kinger continued, musing. “Informed consent. That was it. Patients had to know exactly what they were signing up for and what the risks might be.”
“That’s a good idea those humans had!” Caine returned his hands to the table, fidgeted a bit, seemed to become self-conscious, and folded his arms tight across his chest – all in the space of about five seconds. “But yeah, that’s why I can’t do that. We can’t get informed consent from an abstraction!”
Pomni sucked her lower lip into her mouth. She exchanged a glance with Kinger, and his eyes met hers, calm and even. Despite that, she suspected that he didn’t know the answer here, any more than she did.
He and Caine were right, of course. She’d meant what she said about Caine’s concerns being an indicator of how much he had progressed, and he had raised a valid point. The Circus members knew better than anyone else that making unknown changes to someone’s mind (or mind file) could result in disastrous consequences. If that brain scan headset had come with an informed consent warning, none of them would be here right now.
But on the other hand…it was killing her to not even try. Her general inaction towards the abstracted characters had resulted in unease that accumulated over the years like a steadily building friction, a piece of sandpaper rubbing away at something inside of her until it became raw and bleeding. She kept thinking about Jax saying I don’t want to go. The memory rattled within her like a sharp fragment of metal, scraping against that raw spot as it clattered around. He certainly didn’t seem to be enjoying life as an abstraction. She was sure that he’d want to be revived if he could. If all the rest were suffering just as much, how could it be right to leave them, just because she didn’t have…
Her expression shifted into realization. Kinger noticed, and even Caine, who still struggled to get an accurate read on human facial expressions, recognized enough to tilt his head questioningly.
“Okay.” She nodded firmly. “I’ll get you informed consent. I’ll make sure we only work on someone with their explicit permission.”
“Wha—how?” demanded Caine, his upper jaw lifting in an approximation of an arched eyebrow.
“Don’t worry about that yet.” She snuck a glance at Kinger; he knew how, she could see it in his eyes. “Let’s just say that, hypothetically, someone gives their permission. Would you work with us then? Just to see if it can be done?”
“I, uh…” Caine, having already shot down the request, was clearly unprepared for this question. “I mean, if they really did understand all the risks, then…yes, I suppose I could look into it. But how—”
“Great!” she exclaimed overenthusiastically, cutting him off. “So, Kinger. What are the next steps?”
Kinger spared her one last concerned look before beginning to shuffle through the papers in front of him. “I’ll need time to study everything, of course. I can conjure the code of the abstractions as long as I have the proper equipment.” The words I’ve done it before remained unsaid but made their heavy presence known nonetheless. “It will be a matter of finding…commonalities, let’s say. The things that link the patterns of corruption together. It might take a long time.”
“That’s okay,” Pomni assured him with a faint smile. “We have all the time in the world.”
“From there, I’ll write an algorithm to undo the corruption. I’m sure that will take a long time, too.” He flipped through a couple last sheets, then returned his gaze to her. “Pomni…are you sure you want to do this?”
“Of course,” she replied without missing a beat.
“It’s just that last time, you were nearly subsumed—”
“But I wasn’t. Because you were all there to pull me away when things got bad. Just like you’ll be this time.”
Caine’s eyes were bugging out even more than usual. “What?! What are you planning, Pomni?!”
“I’ll tell you,” she said calmly. “But not just yet. I want to gather everyone up and explain everything when we’re all together.”
“Okay,” said Caine, but he didn’t look like it was okay. He was starting to get that kid-in-the-principal’s-office look again.
Smiling in what she hoped was a reassuring way, Pomni slipped down from her chair. “It’s all good. I’ll just go round up the other three.” She started for the tent flap, which looked like a hanging fold of fabric but blocked out as much light and sound as a proper door.
“I’ll help,” said Caine instantly, gliding after her. This didn’t surprise her much; Caine had never been too fond of dark, enclosed spaces, preferring the vast and bright areas that comprised most of the Circus.
As they emerged, her eyes blinking rapidly in the glare of the main tent, she found herself glancing in the direction of the blanket structure they’d set up all those years ago. She still took the time to sit with him inside every now and again, always staying quiet and calm, and he’d never tried to attack her. Once he got a little too close and accidentally brushed against her foot, causing a brief bout of glitching that Caine had quickly repaired, but it wasn’t enough to deter her. Despite the wriggling worm of dread in her belly at the reminder of her plan, she found herself thinking that it would be good to actually talk to him again.
The contemplative silence lasted for all of ten seconds. Then Caine cleared his throat pointedly. “So, Pomni…now that we’re out here, there’s something that I’ve been meaning to ask you.”
“What is it?” she asked, expecting a new barrage of questions about what she was about to do, or else a request for feedback on some idea that he’d been working on before she and Kinger pulled him away. Caine’s mind constantly bounced back and forth between a dozen different concepts and conversations, and it could be hard to keep up with him.
His question, though, surprised her. “I wanted to know…do humans ever have bad digital hallucinations while they’re sleeping?”
“What?” said Pomni, immediately puzzled by the abrupt change of topic.
“You know how you all sleep sometimes to take a break from everything?” Caine rotated almost ninety degrees in midair as he spoke, peering at her sideways. “I’ve been trying it, too! At first it was nice…but lately I’ve been having these horrible digital hallucinations. Does that happen to humans, or is it just a me problem?”
“Uh…” She wrenched her mind away from Jax and abstractions to mull over his question. “Bad hallucinations? While you’re sleeping? Um, I think you’re talking about nightmares.”
“Oh!” He straightened up. “Is that what nightmares are? I always thought it was just a buzzword to put in the adventures I made for cool, mature Zoobles!”
“No, it, uh, just means ‘bad dreams.’” Belatedly, she added, “And yes, humans do have them.”
“Okay, cool!” Caine nodded. “I’ll just add that to my ‘List of Things I’ve Learned About Humans!’” A long roll of paper, like a cartoon depiction of Santa’s naughty and nice list, appeared in the air before him, and he approached it with an ornate fountain pen that he produced from nowhere in particular.
Pomni frowned. “What are your nightmares about, Caine?”
“Oh wait, aren’t we supposed to be looking for everyone else?” His head snapped up. “I think Ragatha’s at the riding stables I made for her! I’ll go get her while you look for the other two!”
“Okay, but what—” She spoke too late; Caine, list, and pen had already vanished, leaving her feeling even more confused than before. Was he avoiding the subject? Was this a genuine instance of his frequent attention-switching? Or was he just subtly trying to get back at her for not immediately telling him her plan, leaving her just as full of questions as he probably was right now?
I guess I deserve that one, she thought to herself, before putting the bizarre incident out of her mind and heading off in search of Gangle and Zooble.