Now, I am famously bad at making theories, but TADC has a hold on me and I have been Thinking.
Kinger talked about Caine having a different name originally. I reckon that name's Adam, if we're sticking with the biblical references. I could imagine Caine gave himself that name, with that spelling, based on the avatar he crafted for himself among with the (second) name given to him by his creators. Everything he is given, he makes something out of. (Being a creative AI, it also makes sense why he wouldn't listen well to others. He takes everything and spins it, makes it his own. Abel seemed to be good at replicating. Caine was creating, albeit incoherently.)
I also do not think Bubble is Abel. When confroting Caine, he said "the lesser of THE TWO" which would mean that Bubble is a third party, aka not Abel. Just, grammatically. From the "Bubble is a boy" post (bubbleboy virus reference), "you parasite!!", and just everything that happened in ep8, I think we can pretty safely assume that Bubble is a virus of some sort.
As for a timeline. We still don't technically know what C&A stands for (as far as I know), but in all likelyhood it's "Cain & Abel". This means they probably either changed the name of their company, or offically created it, after Caine had devoured the other AI. So, I imagine they continued to monitor Caine and his outputs after the other AI was gone. That probably gained him new interest.
I especially reckon Scratch took an interest in him. Scratch seems to have been the developer for the "insert person into computer" function, driven by his desperation to continue living even as his body died. More on this later.
It is also likely that C&A was abandoned by the time Pomni entered the circus, as she begins to explain her hobby of exploring abandoned buildings when Jax asks her how she ended up in the circus. I wonder when that happened, and why. Seemingly, SOMETHING is still plugged in somewhere since the headset worked, and since the circus is still running. Maybe that’s something Scratch made sure of? Speaking of,,
So, as I said, Scratch wanted to continue to live on even after his body as failed him. This leads me to believe that the characters in the circus aren't connected to their irl bodies at all. This is supported, in my eyes, by Caine's talk about their "mind files". I reckon, the moment you put on that headset it scans your brain and creates a copy of it, which it places inside the circus. Meaning, the irl counterpart of the circus members probably just took it off and walked away, being none the wiser of what has just happened to them. They just continue living, outside, while their circus counterpart goes mad trying to escape to a body that doesn't exist. They can't leave the circus because they were never entered it. They were "created" there. Pasted in. They could only possibly be deleted. Or, abstract.
(Ragatha's spawning into the circus puzzles me here somewhat. On one hand, because she was surrounded by other people, if the way to leave the circus was as easy as taking off the headset, surely someone would have helped her. Supports my theory. However, if she tried on the headset and seemingly nothing happened, surely at least some of the others would have tried it on as well? But she entered alone. Maybe they DO see something. Maybe it's scary. Maybe it hurts. Either way, it probably deters them from putting it on again, thus not creating copies of them, tho I assume there's a prevention mechanism for that, but also probably deters others around them. Maybe it shocks them, idk.)
Now, what is abstraction? Scratch was the first abstraction, that we know. It's also very much implied that it was because of Caine messing too much with his mind file. I reckon abstraction is just corruption of the mind file. Their avatars are described to be a perfect representation of their mind file, which leads me to believe that a corrupted mind file leads to a corrupted avatar. And the corruption seems contagious?
I do think it started with Caine messing around with their minds too much (which lead to the whole first batch abstracting, and also likely lead to Kinger's "crazy" state). But, I reckon he learned his lesson then with the first batch. Ragatha's been fine since she entered, and Caine does have his talk about how messing with their minds would have consequences. So, what's up with the others? Did it spread? Did he mess with their minds anyway? Was it something else? Who knows.
So! That’s my compact compilation of tadc theories. Most are pretty basic, I feel, but I HAVE seen a lot of other versions floating around the fandom space and these are what made the most sense to me
gummygunk
vaporwave
yousharknotpass
pixelskylines
prguitarman
dailybridgerton
kianamaiart