Making a timeline for TADC
Gooseworx has listed their ages as: Kinger- 48, Ragatha- 30, Gangle- 26, Pomni- 25, Zooble/Jax- 22. And if their ages DO include the time spent in the circus, then here is what I’m thinking…
1995: C&A start working on TADC (based on how in Kinger’s intro it says “coming 1995”)
2000: Game starts running, Kinger (30) and Queenie join circus. First initial group in (potentially “testers” from C&A? And then after they abstracted random outsiders started getting chosen?)
2000-2006: Series of abstractions and joining
2006: Queenie abstracts (nobody seems to know about his wife, plus Kinger talks about how he “lost everything” and THEN Ragatha showed up)
2008: Ragatha (20) joins (probably didn’t go to college and got her licensure for real estate as soon as she could (either to get away from her mother or she was pressured by her))
2010: Ribbit joins (teens 16–17?)
2012: Jax (16) joins (since bro knows about Breaking Bad) (if he was close in age with Ribbit it would make sense that they gravitated towards each other)
2014: Gangle (22) joins (since Jax is said to have named her) and some time around here Ribbit abstracts (before or after Gangle arrives remains to be seen, but as discussed in the comments, Jax’s specific targeting of Gangle could have initially been because of anger regarding her arrival (either thinking that the game sees her as a “replacement” or getting annoyed by her reaction to Ribbit’s abstraction when she “didn’t really know them.”)
2015: Ribbit abstracts (could switch places with Gangle’s arrival, making his abstraction BEFORE Gangle arrived)
2017: Zooble (21) joins (since they were a bartender they had to be 21 prior to joining (assuming this is in America))
2018: Pomni (25) joins, Kaufmo abstracts
This makes there a 3 year gap between abstractions (since Ribbit was the last the abstract before Kaufmo), but I’m thinking there was a lot of abstractions early on and the majority of the doors in the hall the cast never even really met. (Maybe they had initial “test groups” which quickly abstracted and over time that’s how the game adapted to ensure people are more comfortable (evolution of AI and Caine.))
But then (unless everyone IS somehow linked to C&A) things got out of control, despite the clear safety issues the program became something members of the wandering public would find (or maybe some people would be specifically chosen based on assessment of them/personalities).
So in early 2000s a LOT of people (mostly linked to C&A) joined at once and got abstracted, but then around Queenie’s abstraction, it started to slow down. People (who seemed to have little connection to things) would drop in and stay longer.
The dates I threw in for the lesser known abstracted characters are more arbitrary, but that’s kind of where I currently headcanon them.
(This technically makes Caine somewhere between the ages of 18-23 (unless he wasn’t the first AI and came later))