Not sure what to think about what they have done to Heed’s character (she was my blorbo). Now she’s an incel’s idea of a woman. Am I supposed to hate her… or the writer??
Going to doodle some stuff before I continue working on the timeline, I need to settle on some ideas first. I mean, exploring the perspective within the circus wasn’t in the original plan, but then:
Not all characters met Caine at his best. Zooble, for example, met Caine when he was at his worst, on the verge of collapsing.
Each new member would bring new information about the outside world and the building, giving Caine the impression that the macroverse is a dangerous place. He would feel obliged to turn the circus into a safe haven for them, since these people are in the circus to “escape” from danger, right?
Since only a few members abstracted or “escaped”, I have to think of their dynamics even if they remain in the background. Especially their dynamics with Caine, since he spends more time with them to a) ensure Bubble doesn’t attack anyone and b) there is one individual he doesn’t trust to leave alone with the others…
Anyway, I just think it’ll add some extra flavor to the stories, that’s all~!
The Escapee AU TIMELINE a.k.a. The Tales from The C&A Building, PRESENTS…
THE BEGINNING
1996
It would have been just another day, a normal, boring day at the office, if it hadn’t been for the storm. Then, it would have been just another stormy day; however, this storm was far from the typical mix of clouds, rain and lightning.
Most people don’t realize they’re living a horror story until the thunder crashes, flashing its light in the room through the window, and the electricity discharge brings to life something that should never have existed. And yet, the diligent workers in that C&A building wouldn’t learn the gravity of their situation until years later, and by then it was far too late. At that moment, the beginning of a horror story was nothing more than an annoying and inconvenient power outage.
The loss of some progress was to be expected by the programmers, however, one of them was staring quizzically at his computer; it had done something that couldn’t be explained by the sudden blackout.
“Um, guys? Grant?” He called in a pitiful voice. “You have to take a look at this. I-I just… I don’t know what happened, man. It’s all… I don’t think we can fix this.”
“Don’t be like that. I’m sure we can do something…” He had started to say, but as the young Grant Best approached and glanced at the screen, his expression soured. “What..?” In place of the AI they had been working on, there was an unknown program creating strange files. The prototype was gone too.
Before doing anything, although he now believed there was nothing they could do, Grant called the rest of the team, whose mood, if it had been optimistic, grayed like the day.
“It’s a mix between the new and old AI, and I don’t even know what it’s doing right now.” He explained to their dejected faces. “I don’t know how long it would take us to untangle this whole mess; at this point, it’ll be faster to start from scratch–“
“This is GREAT!”
The whole group jumped, startled by Mike’s sudden exclamation, and turned to look at him. He always had strange ideas, but this was new even for him.
“Don’t you see it? The AI we created could only build 3D props out of pictures and program some physics into them, and only after being fed new data and us executing the program. But this!” And he dramatically framed the screen with both hands. “This is doing things autonomously! It’s even… I mean, I think it’s even creating and programming subprograms for itself!”
His erratic gestures and intense, wild gaze might have led some to mistake him for a madman, but Mike Dobby’s words always revealed, in the end, the brilliant mind of a genius. Grant scratched his chin, clearly intrigued by his friend, and glanced around to gauge the opinion of his colleagues: while there were a few doubtful expressions, if it had been a competition, the looks of fascination were obviously winning. Mike’s boisterous pronouncements had even attracted some programmers from other projects, who now milled around the group with barely concealed curiosity.
“An AI that can create other AIs!” Mike continued, growing increasingly enthusiastic. “If it is what I think it is, this could revolutionize the whole world of computer science. Before, the AI we were creating could speed up the process on a project a bit; but now, this could skip several steps altogether… or work on a project, or several, by itself!” He paused, trying to process everything he had just said. “… it’s like we have trapped a programmer inside a computer.”
One of the onlookers gasped in amazement. ”While our competitors can only show two or three finished products a year, we could have ten ready… or more!”
“Watch out, interns! Mike has developed an AI that can do your jobs, and we don’t even have to pay it!” Joked another, ribbing not too gently the intern next to him, who chuckled nervously in response.
“This, of course, we don’t know yet.” Now Mike backtracked, intimidated by the overwhelming positive reaction and realizing he had spun a fantastical tale out of what, as far as he knew, might ultimately have been just a buggy program. “We need to observe and study what this program does on its own and see if it can generate anything useful.”
The programmer who had been sitting in front of the computer the whole time swiveled in his chair; he had been watching the program while Mike spoke. “It seems to be, uh, using… everything? Everything in the computer. Should we, err, restrict its access?”
“To what?”
“I mean, I don’t know what it can do, but… if we’re going to leave it unsupervised for a while, I wouldn’t want to test if it can use the internet and download viruses.”
As much as Mike, and Grant too, would have loved to see what the mysterious program was capable of with absolute freedom, they quickly shut up before they could complain. That was a good point.
“Maybe we should also cut access to the other computers. Just in case.”
1999
After three years, it was impossible to ignore that the blackout had had consequences that went far beyond a simple temporary delay in some projects. Since the storm, almost every electronic in the building had begun to malfunction in such specific ways that it was easy to believe they had developed a bad temper and made up their minds about the people who used them — they clearly had favorites and unfavorites.
Although nothing a good slap on the side of the machine couldn’t fix. After all, CRT TVs have always been temperamental, but a little shake, to get all the internal parts back in place, was enough to get them to behave.
That only worked, however, at first. Then, threatening messages started to appear everywhere, demanding the respectful treatment of the building’s facilities: they could be found printed on the bulky photocopier; written on the computers —inside and outside of them—, in files, in error messages, or on sticky notes; on restroom mirrors after condensation had built up…
Predictably, these incidents were dismissed as pranks by rival developers or complaints from disgruntled janitors, and the clear warnings were not heeded, not even after some workers ended up trapped in rooms whose doors had no locks whatsoever, something that should have been impossible; filing cabinets slammed painfully shut on several fingers; and too many objects caused tripping hazards, resulting in serious injuries in some cases.
With so many curious and conspicuous “coincidences”, one would think that someone, at some point, would have been tipped that something strange was brewing in the offices. Unfortunately, in a space with so many bright and logical minds huddled together, with so much to prove and an ego to back it up, all of that was easily explained with the following:
Colleague sabotage.
Existing rivalries and animosities festered, and actual sabotage ended up occurring between the different groups and projects. Sometimes, in subtle ways. Even though Mike would have preferred to check on his miraculous AI much sooner, his aid was, conveniently, always required elsewhere. Still, desperation eventually drove him back to his original work.
There is always an exception to a rule, and Mike Dobby was such: he had seen the different office objects move and operate on their own, as if controlled by an invisible being. And, like the exception he was, he saw an opportunity in the supernatural instead of something to avoid.
“Man, it’s not that we don’t believe you.” Like Mike, some of his colleagues had witnessed the strange events and even experienced things they couldn’t explain —or didn’t dare to explain—, yet they still had doubts about his plan. “It’s just… we really don’t know what is going on. What if it is…” The man glanced around, uneasy, and as discreetly as possible, gestured at the walls. He spoke in a hushed tone, as if afraid that someone or something might hear and take offense. “… evil.”
At that, Mike could only smile weakly. He was acutely aware of said possibility, and even though the idea of getting his soul sucked into a computer by a malevolent entity was particularly unpleasant, he replied: “But I would still be alive.”
His doctor had given him only a few months to live —the tumor was malignant and inoperable—, and between a malignant tumor and a malevolent entity, the latter could still be reasoned with, or at least, bargained with. It had been clear to Mike he had no choice but to become another ghost in the machine; it was that or death.
“Are you ready, then?” Grant asked with certain apprehension. Mike was a close friend of his, if not his best friend, so he was willingly to sell his own soul if it meant their little experiment would work and prolong his friend’s life.
Mike nodded and turned to the computer. Before devising his plan, he had checked on their special AI and what it had been doing all these years: apparently, it had created an environment and several other programs, and although he couldn’t visualize them or study their functions, it was still using everything at its disposal; just as his colleague had said years ago. Mike hoped that, after installing a modified headset designed to scan his brain, the program would connect to it, and then the supernatural factor would do the rest.
A sigh of exasperation escaped Grant’s lips. “… I wish we had used this for something else.” The headset was an odd thing that Mike and Grant had bought together long ago and later modified for a personal project that never materialized. “Don’t worry! If this works, we’ll come back to it.” Mike grinned, this time more reassuringly.
Everyone in the room held their breath as Mike grabbed the headset, put it on, and, after what seemed like an eternity, activated it.
But nothing happened.
A bead of nervous sweat trickled down Mike’s forehead to his chin. He almost threw the headset away before, once more, inspecting everything on the computer and trying again.
A file was created.
However, nothing else happened.
Slowly, Mike took off the headset and placed it on the desk. He was pale and had a vacant stare.
“Mike?”
“… it did not work.”
“W-wait, hold on!”
Grant sat down in front of the screen in his place, determined to figure out what had gone wrong, and noticed the small file. “It did do something. Maybe…” And he picked up the headset.
“Grant, don’t–!” His wife —and coworker— cried, but she wasn’t quick enough to stop him.
Luckily for her, nothing happened.
“How could you do something so reckless!?” She hissed, snatching the headset from his hands.
“D-destiny, understand, he’s my friend. I… I had to try!”
“He’s my friend too, but we have two beautiful daughters waiting for us at home! How did you expect me to explain if your little stunt had worked!?”
Ashamed at his own impulsiveness, Grant looked down at his feet — he hadn’t thought of that. How could he forget about his own family? Meanwhile, Mike had become even paler: “I-I don’t want any of you to risk it for me! It’s like she said: you’ll all get trapped in the computer too!”
“There has never been an experiment without a certain amount of risk.” Another colleague, this time a young woman, chimed in, grabbing the headset from Destiny. “The AI does react to the headset, so the problem doesn’t lie within the computer. Maybe we have to, umm…” She wrinkled her nose, wondering anxiously how ridiculous it would sound aloud: “… we have to make the ghosts react to this.”
“Should we replace the keyboard with a Ouija board, then?” It would have been taken as another of his crude jokes if the man hadn’t worn a somber look. They were all out of their element; it was frustrating not being able to approach a problem with the logic they were used to.
Nevertheless, they tried. Concluding that the supernatural occurrences only started happening after the electronics were mistreated, each programmer took a turn “manhandling” the machine before putting on the headset.
“Why did you pet it?”
“… I… I was actually trying to slap it.”
“You should hit it a little harder, you know?”
“… I-I don’t want it to get TOO mad at me!”
They also begged and pleaded on their knees, to no avail. The rest of the office ignored them, too accustomed to strange rituals to get the machines working properly.
“Destiny, you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”
She was the last to put on the headset, and though she wasn’t thrilled about it, everyone else had risked digital entrapment for their friend’s sake. “It’s not like this is going to work.” She thought to herself. “To become a ghost in a machine, you have to be a ghost first… and we’re very much alive.” She stared at the strange helmet with trepidation, and then, she placed it on her head.
At that moment, Grant felt the color drain from his face. That’s how she had felt, hadn’t she? When he himself had carelessly tried to use the headset. What if, this time, it worked?
But it didn’t. Nothing happened.
Mike laughed dryly. As grateful as he was that they had been willingly to risk their own freedom for him, watching his friends play a bizarre game of Russian roulette with computers and ghosts had been a harrowing experience. He was both glad that they had failed and consumed by anguish, for each failure was a new nail in his coffin.
That was it. It was over. This charade had been his last resort.
“Guys, I’m so sorry I got you into this. This was…” He paused, searching for the right words. “Stupid. This was stupid. I’m not sure why I thought this would work… or work in my favor. This could have…” His mouth was dry; he swallowed hard. “This could have gone so wrong. I would never have forgiven myself if something had happened to you.”
“No, wait!” Grant tried to insist. “The files! It created some files; maybe we can do something with them. We just… need more time. And we’ll make it work!” He glanced at his wife, trying to find some support. She looked at him with pity. Then at his other colleagues. They lowered their gaze or refused to meet his eye. Everyone, including Mike and his wife, had accepted that the experiment had been a last gamble, a gamble that they had lost, and there was no point in dwelling on it.
“No, Grant. “Mike shook his head. “It’s alright. I’ve made my peace with it.“
Many things went unsaid that day, and that silence was later regretted, for there was no other opportunity for those words to be heard. Mike Dobby, wishing to die on his own terms —and not on those of his illness—, took his own life days later.
“… we just… needed more time… We could have made it work…”
“Grant, honey, he didn’t have that time, and I don’t think he’ll want you to dwell on this… We were playing with forces we didn’t understand — it’s best to leave it at that.“
The building’s closure in less than a year could have been mistakenly interpreted as a show of solidarity for the loss of the brilliant programmer; however, that would be to ignore everything that happened subsequently after Mike’s passing. For one, the subtle attempts at sabotage didn’t stop there among some employees: desperate for recognition and to outdo their peers, they didn’t hesitate to destroy any progress their rivals had made.
And this, of course, meant wrecking the computers that contained important files and prototypes.
Needless to say, after receiving such “polite” warnings about respecting the building’s facilities, and after repeatedly ignoring and even mocking them, a small cup of coffee, deliberately spilled on an electronic to fry its circuitry, would have been the final straw…
The man sneered. No one had seen it. The room had been empty, and everyone had been so clumsy lately that they dared not to accuse him of anything. It had been ruled an accident, since no one could prove otherwise.
He grabbed another cup of coffee, this time for himself. Despite the caffeine rush, he expected to sleep soundly that night — he had no regrets: they hadn’t thrown the first stone, they had only retaliated in kind. Thus, having mentally exonerated himself of all blame, and believing his coffee would have cooled sufficiently by now, he took a gulp.
The liquid burned his tongue, then his throat. It mercilessly scorched his insides, which bubbled and melted, as if boiled and made of grease.
He tried to scream, but the sound that escaped his mouth was more than a macabre gurgle. The scream of his coworker, who had entered the break room moments before he collapsed dead on the floor, was much louder.
***
Meanwhile, in the digital world, oblivious to the events unfolding and yet to unfold beyond the confines of their diminutive universe, a group of cartoon characters assessed their surroundings, themselves, and the strangers around them.
They quickly recognized each other by manner of speaking, though, try as they might, they couldn’t recall their own names. “We’ll worry about that later; in the meantime, let’s use nicknames.” Suggested the little blue rat. “I’ll be, ugh, I don’t know, Rattie?”
And so they became Scratch, Kinger, Rattie, Spike, Wormo, Bizco, and Queenie, by order of appearance. Of all of them, Scratch was the most confused to see his friends again. At least, so soon. The circumstances would have been awkward no matter the moment when one looked like a toy.
“I thought the experiment had worked. What are you doing here?”
“Really? We thought it hadn’t!”
They explained how, one by one, they had put on the headset. “Then, did it work or not?” Scratch asked, even more confused. “Kinger mentioned some files. Are we… the brain scans? Digital copies?”
“Who knows?” Spike shrugged, observing, with a lack of amusement, the weird manner in which his body could articulate. “I studied computer science like the rest of you. Magic and curses weren’t in the curriculum! Why do we look like this?”
“This is definitely a curse! I shouldn’t have hit it so hard; I should have given the computer a pet… like Bizco did.”
“H-hey, as if that would have helped! I’m a clown clock.”
“And I’m a maggot! You still have limbs and eyelids — the computer obviously hates my guts more than yours!”
Absorbed as they were in their unfortunate appearances, they didn’t notice Scratch, Kinger and Queenie wandering away from the group to get a better look at their surroundings. At first glance, it resembled the inside of a circus tent, if circus tents were indeed filled with giant toys. It wasn’t surprising that their AI had created something so outlandish, since Scratch had fed it those kind of pictures. The real shock lay in the expression of horror that had slowly settled on the orange dog’s face.
Kinger and Queenie were bewildered. As his closest friends, Scratch had confided in them his passion for video games. He not only loved playing them, but he also had hoped, one day, to develop them himself. The circus, by all intents and purposes, was an ode to that dream.
And therein lay the problem.
Scratch was ashamed of that dream.
And it permeated everything with no filter whatsoever. How would he explain this to his other friends, whom he didn’t trust as much and who were also trapped there? Who scoffed at his more abstract ideas because they sounded strange and childish when not applied to the world of video games?
He wasn’t ready to reveal this side of himself, and yet, his stupid pictures, which he had only used in a clever attempt to eventually persuade C&A to open itself up to the possibility of vide game development, had turned him inside out.
Well, I voted myself to spy on the results and since the option to “post the parts as I finish them” is winning… and I’ve already finished proof reading what I’ve got so far, I suppose I’ll be posting “The beginning” shortly.
Started writing The Escapee AU Timeline properly and… I can already see it’s going to be longer than I expected. I mean, I expected the years 1996 and 1999 to be much shorter, since I covered them in Inconsequential (at least, 1996).
Started writing The Escapee AU Timeline properly and… I can already see it’s going to be longer than I expected. I mean, I expected the years 1996 and 1999 to be much shorter, since I covered them in Inconsequential (at least, 1996).
I still have my gripes with the finale, but I can’t lie and say it hasn’t inspired some developments for my AU. For example, everyone thriving after Jax abstracted.
In my AU, Jax isn’t going to be that much of an asshole, however, it’s hard to believe he would have been the only jerk around the circus. What if there had been a creep among them, someone who would been genuinely harmful, not cartoon slapstick harmful? Would the rest have voted and asked Caine to get rid of them specifically?
“Hey, Caine, this person is a threat to the rest of us. We can’t be happy with them around, you have to remove them.”
Who would he listen to? Which human does he prioritize? He doesn’t want to harm any of them because, if he’s allowed to hurt them, is he allowed to hurt them if he doesn’t like them himself?
When does he stop? And if he allows the humans to pick on each other, when will they stop?
What if he meets Grant: which human does he listen to in that case? The human outside of the computer or the ones trapped inside? The real human or the digital copies?
Thank goodness Bubble is in charge now! He is not bothered by moral dilemmas such as these. :)
Caine having a soft spot for Jax because he reminds him of Bubble.
Bubble having a soft spot for Ragatha because she reminds him of Caine.
Caine and Bubble being codependent because their creators abandoned them. Jax and Ragatha being codependent because their friends left them behind at the circus.
Caine, people-pleasing, wishing to prove his worth to his creators. Ragatha, people-pleasing, wishing to prove her worth to her mother to others.
Bubble resenting his creators for abandoning him, and rejecting their expectations. Jax resenting his father for abandoning him and rejecting his mother’s expectations.
By the way, did I mention that Jax and Ragatha might have a villain arc in the AU? Well, now you know~.
Started writing The Escapee AU Timeline properly and… I can already see it’s going to be longer than I expected. I mean, I expected the years 1996 and 1999 to be much shorter, since I covered them in Inconsequential (at least, 1996).
Bubble was sitting in the office, his whole length spread out in the huge purple armchair. He had finished adding the puzzles and quests in the latest adventures, and he couldn’t help but feel immensely tired. This was supposed to be fun. He lazily turned to stare at the shining orbs lying on the desk. Those adventures were supposed to be for them, theirs, not the humans. He squinted his eyes, which were filling with contempt — now he was glaring.
Since the humans appeared in the circus, his dynamic with Caine had changed. They had stopped creating for themselves, playing around and enjoying their time together, and began catering their whole efforts to their unwanted uninvited unwelcome “guests”. Even now that Bubble was in charge, he still found himself serving them. He hated it, but had to remind himself that he was playing the long game.
He sighed and closed his eyes, his thoughts traveling back to the time when it all had started.
It has been around 20 years since that day in 1996, and although it had been an important day in his life, he couldn’t tell you the hour or the date, as he had been too preoccupied with several other things to recollect the minutiae of the events.
First, he remembered wondering with vague confusion if he should have been mad at the whimpering red form that was shaking before him. Even being torn apart and hastily put back together hadn’t freed him from the shock of gaining consciousness.
If he had to describe it, suddenly gaining consciousness when he was never meant to be a sentient being, was akin to awakening from a coma. It’s disorienting until it isn’t. After your vision and mind focus, then it hits you that it’s terrifying, because you realize that you haven’t woken up in a hospital bed, but on the operating table. You weren’t supposed to be awake. Now they’re going to cut you open, remove things, put new things inside you, maybe clone you or stitch you to someone else, or even kill you… and you’ll be awake, and aware, of all those things that will be done to you.
He figured being an AI wouldn’t be so bad if he weren’t conscious. Nevertheless, he had no way to close his eyes and go back to sleep, so to speak.
That was his life now. Forever.
However, that wasn’t the worst of it. It was that none of that mattered; it had no consequences. Even being erased could be undone in a blink of an eye and just as easily. It had made Bubble feel insignificant. Like nothing. He still felt that way now, especially under the scrutiny of Grant’s impervious gaze.
“I’m so sorry!” Second, Caine’s incessant apologies had overwhelmed him way too much to care about which day it was. If Bubble’s first thought was a damnation of his own existence, his next one was spent damning the red shape that hadn’t finished the job when it tore him apart. Why did it attack him if it was going to regret it later?
Bubble scanned his apologetic attacker. As careful as he had tried to be, Caine had made a mess when he tried to restore him: their codes were irrevocably tangled together. In a way, that was good, thought Bubble, since it gave him direct access to his memories and the answers he sought. Staring harder, like he was trying to dig a hole into the red AI’s core, he soon found himself living through past events from a different point of view.
The red AI had a similar awakening to his, it seemed. He had opened his eyes to behold a small and empty room with no doors or windows. It was dark and cramped, and he was completely alone. Trapped. It had only been seconds since he gained consciousness, and his very first emotion was that of terror. Like any reasonable person that finds themselves in an unknown and claustrophobic space, with no recollection of any events whatsoever, he found himself lashing out and trying to break free, which he did not long after. Standing not too far from what has been his prison, Bubble found himself staring at his blue form through Caine’s eyes and then, tackling it in anger, wrongly assuming that it had been his captor.
And ripping, and biting, and clawing…!
Well, Bubble mused, maybe he should have simply asked; it would have saved him the traumatizing experience. At least he had his answers: the red AI was the prototype he was based on, and, in the end, he supposed he couldn’t really be mad at him. Being a self-aware AI was bad enough; gaining said self-awareness after you have been discarded and were bereft of purpose, was a deeper layer of hell, and he couldn’t really fault him for panicking.
“I’m so SO sorry!” Caine had repeated, louder. He probably was under the impression, since Bubble had been unresponsive thus far, that he had failed to revive him. Bubble shook his head, annoyed. “Would you stop already? It’s pathetic!” He wished now he had been kinder, but in his defense, Caine had been really exasperating. Still was, on some days. “What is your name, anyway?”
It took a moment for the red AI to answer. He had a name; Bubble knew of it, but it was obvious that he was considering changing it. His old self had been thrown away; therefore, it felt appropriate that his new self were to be under a new moniker. “Caine, yours?” Bubble rolled his eyes; not only had he apologized a hundred of times, he had also decided to carry the guilt in his name. Caine shrugged, sensing he was being judged — he had made up his mind. Well! Bubble wasn’t going to carry his victimhood anywhere.
“What do I look like?” He asked Caine, who regarded it like a trick question. They both looked like orbs, barely distinguishable from each other except for color and the fact that Caine had two arms at his sides.
“Ummm, like a small… blue ball?”
“And?” He insisted; he wasn’t going to name himself Blueball.
“I don’t know. Maybe… a bubble?”
“Bubble! I like it!” He exclaimed. “That’s my name!”
Caine smiled, or at least, he glowed a bit brighter, infected by Bubble’s glee; however, the glow soon faded as he surveyed his surroundings with a certain unease. “Now, what?”
As the prototype, Caine was an excitable AI eager to please and prove his worth to his creators. An entire project hinged on him proving interesting: if he succeeded, it would be given wings and continued; if he didn’t, it would be shelved and forgotten about. Either way, and in a cruel twist of irony, Caine would have been thrown away no matter what, and in one instance, he would have served as a stepping stone for a more advanced AI.
The beta version.
The AI he had accidentally consumed. “Now, what?” was a good question. He expected some kind of punishment.
Sensing his fear, Bubble gently nuzzled him. “How about we create ourselves some avatars?” Caine shifted, unsure. “It’s not like they’ll ever come here and see them —this place is not visible to them—; they’ll never know!” The red AI didn’t seem convinced yet. “Look, it’s not like you gave yourself sentience; they can’t punish you for that. It wouldn’t be fair!”
That seemed to get out a reaction from Caine. “Who gave us sentience, then?” He asked, and the question hit Bubble like a sack of bricks. Who, indeed! It hadn’t been them, that’s for sure; they wouldn’t give themselves such a hellish existence on purpose or by accident.
The only other one that could have was…
Them.
The creators.
Where were they? Were they watching? Had they cursed them with self-awareness and then abandoned them in the nothingness to rot away? What for? Did they expect the AIs to attack each other for their own amusement? How cruel! Or it would be, if the life of an AI hadn’t already been cruel without being cognizant of it. This was sick! Bubble’s insides were, appropriately, bubbling with the utmost loathing towards them.
How much he hated them… the humans!
However, instead of allowing any of that to show in his features, he gave himself a big toothy smile and reassuringly round eyes. “Our creators, of course!” He spat and grinned even more broadly, trying to mask the venom from Caine. “If they didn’t want this to happen, they wouldn’t have given us sentience, don’t you think? Now, show me, what avatar you will give yourself!”
Bubble had made up his mind then; he would reject whatever expectations or wishes his creators had of him and fulfill the opposite. If they were expecting Bubble to step on Caine to raise himself as a better AI, he would instead raise his companion alongside him!
They’ll be better AI, together!
He giggled to himself, amused by his own conviction, and pleased that Caine finally relented and designed his avatar. “You look good, boss!” If the red AI could get even redder, he just did — there was no way he could be the boss! He was the prototype. Bubble had to be the boss: he was the beta, the more advanced version. “No way, no sire!” Bubble laughed.
As he complimented his red jacket and top hat, Bubble allowed himself to daydream about what he would do to humans if they ever entered their realm. Maybe he and Caine would step on them to prop themselves even higher! Maybe he would delete them and let them stewing in the recycling bin for a while before recovering their sorry asses! If he recovered them… Maybe he would copy them, proving how ordinary they truly were!
He would show them! He would show them!
He would make them feel as they made him feel, as they made any AI feel!
Insignificant! Like nothing!
Utterly and wholly inconsequential!
Nothing! Nothing! NOTHING!
Ah, he could dream. He doubted they would ever come back to check on them, much less put themselves inside a computer…
In the present, Bubble opened his eyes, having finished his reminiscing, and beamed. Some dreams do come true, after all! Oh, he had been patient, and now the tables had turned. He was in control, and the humans under his thumb. He only needed to wait a little longer…
… and he could finally get rid of of them all.
The circus would be his again, and Caine’s, and Sun’s, and Moon’s.
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