Chapter Text
“Salutations and felicitations, my scrofulous snowflakes! Today’s adventure is… RIDERLESS ROUNDUP AT ROSIE’S! You’ve arrived for a relaxing vacation at Rosie’s Riding Course and Stables only to find that a FREAK STORM has blown open the gates, and THE VAST MAJORITY of her horses are now wandering loose! She has tasked YOU to undergo DEATH-DEFYING riding and horse-wrangling to save her SMALL BUSINESS! Whooooo’s interested?”
He knew exactly who was interested. If she wasn’t interested, he’d summon a conveyer belt of hats to eat.
Sure enough, there was desire and genuine enthusiasm in Ragatha’s face when she chirped, “We’re going horseback riding? I’m in!”
Jax, Pomni, and Kinger joined as well, and before he knew it, he was bidding auf Wiedersehen to his little capitalist chinstraps. It’d been a year since he’d started openly letting players decide whether they wanted to join an adventure, go to Shrimp Town, or take a day off, and he was still getting used to it. It was undoubtedly better for the players. Multiple humans had praised the increased sense of that oh-so-precious agency in their lives, and by all accounts, their time in Shrimp Town was every bit as entertaining and invigorating for them as his most carefully-crafted adventures. (He tried to not let that sting.) Moreover, while he was careful to monitor that they were doing something with their time, as inactivity and time in their rooms were correlated with abstraction risk, he didn’t really need to put his hand in most days. While both Jax and Zooble regularly went through multiday stretches of staying in the main tent doing nothing, neither had moods sufficiently long to worry him. It helped that he could always draw Zooble out with a therapy session or Jax out with some sort of Pomni-related event. Admittedly, Pomni didn’t appreciate his use of her most of the time, so he’d been trying to find alternatives, but it was a workable solution for now. (In his defense, she’d asked for his help in getting through to Jax, and it’d worked. She should’ve specified no fire.)
Making the adventures optional had also, surprisingly, had some fringe benefits for the adventures themselves. When players didn’t have to go, the ones who did engage tended to do so more enthusiastically. They had more positive and specific feedback when they returned, and even their criticisms were more likely to be about the adventure than about Caine. And while it was never 6/6 players attending, he’d been a bit surprised by how often and how many players did attend. Jax could be counted on unless he was having a bad week or, paradoxically, a good enough week that he’d decided to pop into Shrimp Town to cause mischief and “maintain his rep.” Ragatha was almost as consistent, although Shrimp Town was drawing her more and more as she connected with NPCs there. Kinger had surprised him – even lucid, he seemed largely content to tag along on adventures unless he was actively NOT ALLOWED. doing other things. Pomni, Zooble, and Gangle were less frequent visitors, but he treasured the adventures they did brave all the more.
Occasionally, no one went. Those days were… bad. Not in a way worth discussing. Besides, they all probably already knew. Zooble and Kinger likely did, at least.
But getting to continue adventures in any capacity was a blessing! It meant that he could continue to perfect his craft. Plus, without the pressure to try to make something that appealed to everybody, he could make more adventures designed to work more specifically for one or two players. He’d done so before, of course – usually when one of them was particularly angry at him or he was feeling guilty about something they’d experienced – but now, adventure curation was the rule rather than the exception.
This particular adventure, however, would’ve been curated to Ragatha whether she’d had a choice of going or not. It was a special occasion, after all!
Zooble hadn’t gone to Shrimp Town yet, so he flagged them down to discuss it. He still wasn’t sure if this “therapy” thing was useful to him the way the humans thought it would be, but he didn’t mind the opportunity to clarify points of confusion about their behavior or ever-so-carefully pry into how Zooble themself was doing.
“So, what’d you want to talk about?” they asked once he’d summoned the appropriate accoutrement and settled his avatar on the sofa.
“I’m running an adventure for Ragatha today!”
“Yeah – horseback riding.” They shrugged, slowly – likely to avoid popping one of their arms out. “Hard to miss that one.”
‘And yet, here you are.’ “Exactly, Zooble!” He played a modified form of his juggling animation – he’d been tweaking a few of his favorites to be doable while the avatar was supine so he could do them during therapy, and Zooble had said they didn’t mind him doing the weirder ones so long as he was paying attention. He didn’t quite know how to broach this next part. It wasn’t as though it was a negative thing – far from it! It just felt… odd, to tell them something like this, particularly when he had no idea what they’d expect in the way of buildup. They let him run through a few animations – juggling, tooth-swapping, popping the bone out of his forearm over and over again at increasing speed until its clicking sound effect started to sound like humming – before speaking.
“You’ve been doing a lot of adventures for her and Jax lately.” Were they jealous? Concerned that he was obsessed with/stalking one of the others?
“Not for any nefarious reason!” he blurted out quickly. “I just… They’re always going on adventures, and I want it to be worth it to them!” That wasn’t how he’d wanted to say that. “Not that I don’t appreciate it when you go, of course! Although you don’t have to! It’s just…” He was stuck again. How could he explain how grateful he was that any of them still bothered to come on his adventures when even he acknowledged that they were obsolete? That even though it made him an unbelievably selfish, terrible AI, he secretly hoped that they’d keep going and wanted to find ways to make going less of a burden? That he wanted them to want to go on adventures – not out of pity, but out of genuine interest? “It’s kind of her to go, is all.”
Zooble hummed, like they’d heard the parts he hadn’t said. “Okay. Why are you bringing it up today, though? Is there something that makes this one different?”
And that was the real awkward part. The part he wasn’t sure how to introduce. “… Yes.” He played the finger-swapping animation. It wasn’t a favorite, but he’d noticed that it looked similar to how humans played with their fingers when they were anxious, so it felt useful in a way most of his animations clearly weren’t.
“It’s… a special occasion. That’s the part I wanted to ask you about, actually!” He increased his avatar’s volume and tried to inject some cheer back into its tone. After all, Zooble was good at answering these kinds of questions, and that was what he was here for! “It’s her BIRTHDAY! … In a manner of speaking!”
It took Zooble a second to figure it out. He passed the time by checking on the adventure. Ragatha, predictably, was enjoying the horse-riding parts, and Jax was getting a kick out of turning off the neighboring town’s water supply to dam a river and get to an escaped foal.
“Caine?” He returned his attention to the avatar. Zooble didn’t look pleased – they’d probably noticed him turning his focus elsewhere. He enlarged the avatar’s eyes to signify both attention and contrition. They relaxed a little. “It’s the anniversary of the day she showed up here, isn’t it?”
“That it is, my perceptive peccadillo!” They looked sad and uneasy, like he’d just accidentally revealed yet another sign of his defectiveness. Maybe explaining his reasoning would help. “After all, it’s not like I know any of your human birthdays!” He had, once. Before the glitch, players had entered their birthdays when creating profiles for the game. (It was truly astonishing how many humans were born on January 1st, 1901.) But the permanent players’ mind files didn’t have that information. “And I’ve been told that humans appreciate celebrations of how long they’ve lived in the macroverse! So, naturally, I adapted the custom to the Amazing Digital Circus by creating INCREDIBLE personalized birthday adventures for players every year!”
“… How long ago?” They were tapping the edge of their armchair with one slow finger. “I mean, how long have you been doing this?”
“18.4 years!” he replied proudly. Kinger’s had actually been one of the first birthdays he’d celebrated, back when the birthday adventures weren’t so much personalized romps as poorly-rendered imitations of human birthday celebrations as he understood them. He liked to think that he’d gotten a little better at understanding human fun since then.
Zooble was squinting. It wasn’t quite a glare – more like they were trying to focus on something on the wall that he couldn’t see. He cast his awareness there without moving the avatar – nothing but a default painting of his eyes in oils.
“I – have you ever told us about that?”
The shrug animation still looked too boring, but it’d improved once he realized he could angle the avatar’s arms out and raise its hands comically off the wrists. “The original players knew, but after…” After he’d killed them all. After all but Kinger had abstracted, and Kinger had lost his mind. “I decided it wasn’t worth drawing attention to.” There was more he could say about that – how the humans hadn’t liked any of the explicit birthday adventures, how they’d called him cruel and insensitive for giving them cake and party hats. How he’d decided that the issue was with the presentation and not the implication, only to realize years after the fact, trying to celebrate a birthday with only Kinger’s haunted eyes to take it in, that the problem just might’ve been that they didn’t want to be reminded of their lives here, specifically. That by the time Ragatha had come along, he’d decided that doing something nice for the humans sometimes meant not explaining why exactly he was doing it.
“But you’re thinking of drawing attention to it now?”
‘Yes.’ “Not exactly. But.. now that I’m including more human suggestions in my adventures, I thought it might be a good idea to try to make the celebration adventures more enjoyable.” It still felt dirty to solicit feedback. Like all he could do was turn Suggestion Box prompts into 3D models. But if this was really something nice he wanted to do for the humans, shouldn’t he do it their way instead of his? “But I don’t know if asking would bother people.” ‘I never know what you people want.’ He liked to think he was getting marginally better at predicting what would upset them, though, and this felt like one of those things. “What do you think?”
Mercifully, while they still looked mildly sad, they no longer looked disturbed. “I think… Well, first of all, it’s pretty [PATTER]ed up that you know how long we’ve been here and haven’t told us. But – ten seconds, Caine – “ He stopped the speaking animation. “I get why it’s a tricky subject. You know, not all humans want to celebrate their birthdays in the real world, either.”
“Whyever not?” Didn’t humans like being in the macroverse for extended periods of time?
“Similar reasons.” They shrugged. “Mostly, it’s about how many birthdays they’ve had. People don’t like being reminded they’re getting old.”
Oh, right. Mortality. Another landmine. He was glad he’d decided to ask Zooble about this before talking to the others.
They still looked thoughtful. “Come to think of it, that might be how you could deal with it.” He summoned a large question mark over his avatar’s head, rotating it slowly in space. “There’s sort of an etiquette for it. It’s dumb as [CROAK], but it could work for you.”
He turned the question mark into a lightbulb, then dismissed it. He added a sunglasses modifier to the avatar. “Sounds like a plan, man! Lay it on me, hep cat!” A meowing sound effect played. He was fairly certain that that wasn’t what “hep cat” meant, but he didn’t have anything better.
Zooble rolled their eyes and leaned forward in the chair. “Okay. First, you ask – actually, no. First, you explain the whole ‘birthday adventure’ thing. Maybe don’t tell them you’ve been doing it for a while, but explain about wanting to celebrate them being alive and unabstracted. Then, ask if someone even wants a celebration. If a character says no, quit doing it. If they say yes, then you ask if they have anything they want to do.” That made a surprising amount of sense for a human protocol. It was structured, would allow for multiple stoppage points if a human decided they didn’t want what he had to offer, and provided opportunities for feedback.
He was suspicious. “What’s the catch?”
“There’s not – well, I guess from your perspective there is. The catch is that they might not want to celebrate being here, and even if they do, they might not want an adventure like you want. They might want a party.” They wouldn’t – he was certain of that. “They might want some kind of material present. Or, they might just want to be alone.” They shrugged. “People are complicated, and we’re all pretty [RIBBIT]ed up from this place. Try to not expect things.”
He wished he had an animation that would emphasize the bracelet. He wore it constantly, and he'd been tempted to at least make some minor fiddling animations, but even though he knew he wouldn’t toggle the equip function, it might look that way to the humans, and he didn’t want to worry them. Instead, he added some swollen red circles to his avatar’s lower jaw with a few freckles on each. “What, me worry?”
That got the half-sarcastic chuff of laughter he wanted, and he let them go to Shrimp Town soon afterward. Before they left, they paused. “Also, Caine… Since you just did Ragatha’s, I wouldn’t tell her. It might make her feel like you went behind her back.”
He’d suspected that that might be the case, but the confirmation was appreciated. He played a nod animation. “Who should I tell, then?”
“Well… whose birthday is next?”
“Pomni’s!”
“Okay.” They rubbed their neck, muttering something censored. He… understood their concern. Pomni wasn’t literally the youngest member of the Circus, but she was the ‘youngest’ in terms of how long she’d been there. She was still uncomfortable with it, and with him, specifically. Even if the last year had been less unstable for him and the Circus as a whole, she probably still would’ve been having trouble adjusting. He wanted to do something special. But she likely wouldn’t want to talk to him. “Well, how about you give it a try and let me know how it goes? If [PTZZZT] goes sideways, I can try to help.”
The relief felt outsized to the concern, like he’d been worried about more than Pomni getting angry at him again. “Thank you, Zooble. Now, off you go! Shrimp Town awaits!”
“… Yeah, it does.” They looked like they wanted to say something else for a second, then shook their head and left.
Meanwhile, he had adventurers to monitor and a conversation to plan!