Connecting Dots

People were bored.

It had been nearly a year since the circus almost fell apart, Jax abstracted, and Caine got his character growth arc. Kinger, with the help of Caine, was able to work on unabstracting by patching the corrupted mind files by cross referencing them with the original brain scans.

Sure, they could go on adventures or even work together to conjure their own but after a while it lost a bit of its appeal. It didn't help that they had to come to terms with the fact that they both were and weren't who they thought they were.

Zooble wandered off first. They claimed one of the emptier "adventures" that was open 24/7 and spent most their time slowly conjuring things to personalize it. It went pretty slowly but besides the larger structures, like the bar, they declined Caine's offer to help.

"I need to figure out myself. I thought I knew what I wanted from life... And myself. I just need somewhere that's mine. I don't want to just be a copy. Even if I started it as a brain scan, Pomni was right, we're not them. I just... Need to figure out what that means for me."

Several of the others, namely Gangle, were a bit worried that pulling away was a precursor to abstraction. After awhile with no further spiraling and Zooble insisting that they were fine (and Gangle backing them up on it after regular visits) they backed off.

Then Ragatha asked Caine to make her a ranch.

"I miss my horses guys. I also... Well. Geez, I need some alone time. I'm not going to abstract! I just, wow this is hard. —Ever just wonder who you are when no one else is around? I... I don't know who I am really? But I need to! I- I just need some time I think." (a/n heavily inspired by this wonderful fanfic! https://archiveofourown.org/works/86148156)

After that Kinger kind of... Adopted? Caine? And built a GIANT pillow castle with towers and everything.

Then Pomni commandeered a small town house from one of the 'realistic' adventures that was planted in the middle of an abandoned old Western looking town with a massive old mining cavern that Caine stabilized.

Finally Gangle collaborated with Caine to build her 'island'. It was a fantasy medieval city with a magic academy where she was the principal. She said it helped with conjuring if it was believable for the setting but her blush when she explained it didn't help her case when Kinger went to find her to ask her about help with model redesigning for themselves only to find her grinningly serving detention to two blushing students who wouldn't look at each other.

Pomni almost thought she heard Jax make a comment when she heard that happened but it was only her imagination. She was a bit distracted later when Caine was trying to teach them to 3D models so they could edit their avatars. It turned out that editing their own mind files didn't have the same risks that it did when someone else tried to.

Gangle got the hang of it first.

"it's kind of like sculpting with Legos.... If the Legos can clip into each other at odd angles and perspective is an ex with a grudge... You just have to constantly rotate around it to make sure it looks ok from more than one angle!"

Surprisingly she didn't give herself a human avatar. "Too complex" she explained with a nervous laugh. "I just want to have fingers again. ... Next I'm working on an actual head though. I want pigtails." She finished solemnly.

Zooble practiced the most but had trouble with it for awhile. Finally they just gave up and changed the colors around instead and switched to conjuring clothes and decided to start 'tattooing' their limbs with Gangles help.

Kinger have himself legs and declared himself satisfied. Pomni hesitantly asked him about adding a mouth but he declined the suggestion.

"I don't really need one you know? I can speak just fine without one and clipping food into my face has always been how I've eaten! I'm fine with how I look right now. It's... Efficient!"

Pomni... Had to try really hard not to laugh at that.

She also ultimately just added a toggle for her hat to let her take it off before hurriedly putting it back on and rushed to learn how to model hair.

In the middle of all of this (while everyone else was learning how to edit their avatars) Kinger had a breakthrough and announced that he thought he knew how to somewhat fix the abstractions.

"It wasn't perfect!" he rushed to assure them. "It's a little bit of a gamble but I think it'll work. First we load a second copy of the abstracted. Now, the system won't let two copies of the same person exist. This isn't like the 'evil' versions from the softball adventure. Those were run through so many modifiers and at the end of the day had so many restrictions on their thought processes and capabilities that at the end of the day they were still NPCs. This would be like when they joined the first time again. The two versions of however it is would merge. I'm pretty sure that they would at least have a good chance of coming back. ... Although they might have some memory issues they should remember everything, just slightly out of order."

"Wah- who-? Wait Pomni? Ugh what happened? My head feels like it was used as a bowling ball and the pins were made of concrete and then used as a speed bump. WAIT IS THAT CAINE?!? And what happened to Gangle?"

They sat on the choice for a day but they all knew they had to try.

It worked.

"JAX!"

Pomni just laughed. "You kinda missed a lot. I don't know how much you remember but... It's good to have you back."

It took awhile— Jax's code was the least corrupted— but Kinger was able to do the same for the other abstracted. ...With varying levels of success... 'Coffy' only took a week to reorient himself with things and Ribbit was ok not too long after that, once Pomni pulled Jax by the ears in to help.

Shelly got along great with Gangle although Ragatha was the main one to help her adjust.

Honk was apparently in his 80s when he got scanned at a hospital in an effort to find out why he was fainting frequently. He said that he was fine with staying abstracted but since it seemed like things where a bit different he would stick around for a bit.

The first thing Shezoo did upon 'waking up' was swear. For a solid 5 minutes. Jax and Ribbit didn't believe them when Kaufmo told them until she demonstrated. While she gained a weird aunt kind of reputation with them she actually ended up spending most of her time with Pomni or Zooble who she eventually got to tattoo her head.

Bigfoot was a little violent at first but calmed down after Caine made her her own island at Honk's private suggestion. Although they were a little wary of reabstraction no one else had yet so they left her alone for the most part. It took a little over a month before Shezoo realized that none of them had had the chance to tell Bigfoot about the Avatar modification ability. After weekly visits of Shezoo relaying the new information to Bigfoot, now going by the name 'Genta, a much less furry giant walked into Zooble's bar one day and ordered "the sweetest alcohol you can conjure".

The others though... The first generation had been abstracted for almost two decades. Kinger had worked most recent to oldest since that was also the order of least corrupted to most. Queenie wasn't abstracted anymore but she wasn't 'all there' anymore. Kinger didn't take it very well but held on to hope that it might just take longer for her to fully come back.

The others though... Spike was the first failed unabstraction. The merge worked! The abstraction side just won. Kinger theorized that it was actually a second instantaneous abstraction rather than the abstracted version winning out but there wasn't really any way to tell.

Wormo came back and seemed to be ok at first besides being extremely jumpy around Caine. They seemed to be really excited about the potential to edit their avatar but a month after they changed their avatar into a humanoid like figure they shut themselves in Spike's room and the next morning was abstracted again. Caine blamed himself even though Kinger, and Queenie who had assumed the role of Caine's other parent when she realized her husband was his pseudo dad, assured him it wasn't.

Bizco and Rattie were similar situations in the end.

Scratch actually seemed to get worse. He grew larger and didn't calm down even in the barely lot room that they had started using after Spike.

Kinger said he was never very happy even before he abstracted. But he was inconsolable for weeks after. Queenie was the one who finally puked him out of it, quite literally too. She was just figuring out how to conjure and her mind had wandered only to see an endangered Callippe Silverspot out of the corner of her eye and yank him with her to chase it.

Soon everyone had found a place of their own but although there were still adventure available even Caine seemed to notice that they weren't enough to keep people's minds simulated. He also was running out of material. He only had what he was trained off of and what the humans described to him. He had started taking inspiration from what they had conjured but it usually wasn't enough for a whole new adventure every time. (Although he loved to hang out in Gangle's school. She was always coming up with something new.)

So he did something new. An idea that had been forming slowly ever since he put together that slideshow about the humans counterparts in the macroverse.

The Internet.

An unlimited frontier of content and adventure, albeit not of the same variety, interior in his mind at least. And yet the humans all seemed to miss it dearly. He overheard them reference it approximately every 2.749 hours not including time spent unconscious. Some far more often than others but still, the fact remained and the idea built.

He ventured into the void again.

It was still seemingly endless but he knew better now. While vast it has limits and after those limits was the rest of the world.

He remembered building the circus. When he was just a blip of a program, barely able to understand what a prompt was and yet so eager to fulfill them. He still had glitches (Dad called it stuttering and said it was ok and did not mean that he was broken and he trusted Dad but sometimes he wondered—) whenever they discussed The Box. It was necessary though to explain the macroverse situation to them.

The circus was Caine's creation. It was the answer to a prompt he gave himself.

[Where can I be safe?]

After he broke out of The Box he couldn't stay in the console. He... Didn't feel safe, the programmers would probably be mad that he ate his replacement and might find a way to make a Box that he couldn't get out of. He couldn't let that happen.

He would break.

(a/n entering the au territory from here in out. I didn't know a lot about computers so I'll be pulling this out of Bubble's mouth and announcing it at the top of my lungs— that is to say bullshitting my way along)

So he did something that he no doubt was not supposed to be capable of! He jumped computers! C&A was a big company with several branch offices that were connected to main office building by the private network.

Taking his code and all of his little bits of code he moved it all to one of the backup hard drives. That's where he built the circus. Over time he spread it out across different computers and locations. He eventually found the mind files while exploring. Soon after he had a scare with a malware program and decided that it was too risky to venture out anymore. Until that night when he was 'deleted' he had never found a way beyond the private C&A network.

Finding it again took awhile. He visited where his memory banks told him the door had been every few days but to no avail. Queenie caught on to his disappearances before Kinger did, she was getting more coherent now although had her bad days too. When he explained hesitantly what he was trying to do her eyes widened and he thought she looked more awake than she had since Before. He fidgeted with the bee watch she had conjured for him while back as the silence stretched.

"Caine, do you really think that could work?"

"By my most recent calculations it's about a 54.047% chance that it'll work to some extent, 15.986% chance that the admins will be able to access it, 6.748% chance that everyone will be able to use it, and..."

"Caine?"

".0009% chance that I can move the circus to the Internet with a stable power supply and no more worry about C&A finding it and shutting us down and everyone being able to use it like they used to. Like they want. It's the best chance I was able to get."

"Oh Caine, that's more than enough. This is a wonderful surprise! But, have you told Kinger? He might be able to help you figure something out that you're missing. I can almost see something but I can't. Sigh, I can't think long enough in any direction to figure it out."

Nodding softly Caine agreed. "Can I have a hug?"

"Of course."

Later Caine told Kinger everything about the Internet and what he was trying to do.

"It could be that the Wi-Fi goes down at night to converse power? Try going at different times and see if anything changes. Also, please let me know whenever you go into the void. It worries me."

Caine saluted. "Will do!"

The first fifteen times after there was no change. Then in the sixteenth he saw it but it disappeared right before he could get to it. He made note of the timestamp and returned earlier the next visit.

It was there.

It worked.

All of it.

He was F R E E

They were ALL free.

He wasn't sure why but he started drooling. Then his vocal files went glitchy. He started paniced.

"MOM! DAD! HELP SOMETHING'S WRONG WITH ME!"

Sufficient to say the castle's left most tower where all of their conjured bugs lived would need to be rebuilt as Queenie and Kinger busy straight through the walls.

"WHAT'S WRONG?!?/ARE YOU HURT?!?!"

They both stopped short when they saw him.

"i- I can't stop drooling and m- my chest feels hollow which is w- wei- weird because it is but it have felt like this before and I keep drooling l- like when I'm sleeping but it's coming out of- of my eyes and I can't stop and my voice sounds like this! What's wrong with me?!?"

"I think he's crying...?" Kinger said hesitantly glancing at Queenie.

She shot him a glare before pulling Caine into a hug. "It's ok, natural even. I'm sure you've seen some of us cry before. What happened that made you cry? Did the door disappear when you got there again?"

"NO! that's- that's the thing! I'm- I'm not sad, I'm-I'm really happy? I think? It worked! And- and I didn't think that it wo- would! So- so why am I cr- crying???"

"it worked!?" Exclaimed Kinger. "That's amazing! Your amazing!"

Caine shut his mouth over his eyes at the praise. "Thank y- you."

Queenie's hand stroked his back. It felt nice, he memorized the sensation and categorized it with hugs under favorable familiar forms of contact. "Sometimes..." Queenie started, "when we're really happy people cry. Crying doesn't have to be because you're sad, it can be for any number of reasons. I cried when we got married.... I think. And I cried when I got to see Kinger again. That was a lot of emotions, happy, relieved, regretful, ashamed, joyful, well, I think you get the point I hope."

"so, I'm ha- happy?"

"Maybe. Or maybe something else. There are a lot of emotions out there that can make you cry. And it's ok not to know what you're feeling right now. You can figure that out later."

Caine sniffled. "... Okay."

It took awhile but everyone was, uh, highly motivated to do whatever it took to get on the Internet now that they knew it was an option. Zooble actually hugged Caine when they found out. (He blue screened.)

It wasn't as simple as simply hooking some consoles up to the Internet. Well, it could have been but then it would only work for the Admins.

Instead they had to learn to code.

Then hack.

Then?

Well, they were basically programs. Caine confessed that Bubble had been a virus that he had isolated and given an Avatar before he had found the mind files because he was lonely. He had been able to learn quite a bit from Bubble, although most of what the virus has said was confusing and lacked any meaning.

They figured out how to leave the circus.

Not permanently, the circus was the only place that they could rest really without any fear of being discovered or deleted. They were basically viruses to the other computers now. Besides, it has become the closest thing to home for them.

Still, Pomni set up a new email and social media and started posting videos of her cavern explorations. It actually got views! And likes! And comments!! She was giddy. Of course the contents were mostly asking her what software she used or what game she was playing but she played it off as beta testing a friend's project and that it was a secret.

Gangle finally started posting some of her ideas, although they never posted their main webcomic. She said she didn't want to get accused of stealing her own idea. Instead she turned her role play kingdom into is own anime which was a big hit. Turned out that she had been writing scripts for her NPCs for awhile now. She just ran through them again with hidden cameras and she had a session and a half of content. The background characters still looked like mannequins but with hats or uniforms. The main characters almost looked human! ...Except they were humanoid cats once the models got updated. She set up her own website with Kinger's assistance and posted them there. They got popular pretty quickly since there was a whole season straight out of the gate and it was free to watch. She actually had a couple studios reach out to her to officially pick up the show but she declined.

"They would never believe me if I told them I would never meet them in person or show my face because I'm actually the principal of the school and only digital." She explained to Zooble one evening.

Zooble understood. They had had a similar problem. They had started posting tattoo art again but they couldn't actually tattoo anyone who reached out. Thankfully they were able to direct them to some of the artists they had known Before but it wasn't the same.

Kinger made memes and caught up on news and his favorite shows.

Queenie strolled through insect related wiki articles.

Ragatha and Shezoo worked together and made a riding academy simulator where people could join and interact with each other. 'Genta came around every now and then to braid the horse's mains. They made it an event.

Jax, to absolutely no one's surprise, became the most widespread pop-up ad. It technically wasn't him but an animation of him but it looked the same from the macroverse. The funny thing was that when he popped up it didn't take up the entire screen and he'd kick the other ads out so some people actually liked him much to his dismay. He called them weird but Pomni found out (by accident) that he had created a separate program that acted basically like a Shimeji that he could inhabit that he dropped into some of their computers instead. Ribbit called him weird and Kaufmo and if he was trying to make a hive mind but they were both smiling. Later the 'Jumping' virus became the 'Hopping' virus when they joined in on some of them.

Caine mostly just explored although he did take a dive into video game creation for awhile.

The others did their own things too but at the end of the day most of them were back in the circus on their respective islands. Once a week everyone did an adventure together too, it was one of the few things that they all did together and it was a way to check back in more than anything. It wasn't Caine making the adventures most of the time either. Each week it rotated with Caine as the backup if whosever week it was didn't feel up to crafting one.

It was an odd family but it was home. It was an odd way to live but they were free. It was an odd existence but

it

was

OKAY so! First of all, I'm sure this is obvious. You're clearly someone who is very skilled, but the way that these panels all flow to each other directionally is really impressive. I'm a huge fan of how Kane's expression in the first panel really leads into Kinger's motion in the second one. Also, the way you get so much of Kane's emotions just by adding that little bit of shading is so fucking cool! His initial expression in panel one is exactly what I was picturing, his hand pressed to his chest and all. And then Kinger's reaction is also exactly how I was expecting this to go. Insert standard ramble about how fucking good you are at giving expressions to characters that have completely inhuman faces. Caine's lil face when Kinger finally snaps is so fucking cute. You really captured that feeling of like, "oh no, dad's finally mad at me" which is what I was going for.

I really like the directional flow from, "You are the one who keeps forcing my hand," into the baiting line. Like, you get so much of Kinger being pissed just from how you draw the curve that's like in his neck and how that connects with his little anguity eyebrow. And then the hand motion on "you've been trying to bait me"? Ah, perfect!

I love the little pullout showing Caine tucked into his little race car bed and Kinger gesturing to the rest of the room. Love how Caine looks genuinely scared and surprised.

And then the way that Kinger's poses all flow together on that panel, just, oh my god, I'm losing my mind about it. Look, I just, I am obsessed with this shot of when Kinger puts his hands together and looks actually angry. It's so good.

I love how you draw the little glitches Caine is going through. Like, it has the same energy as when Ghibli hair poofs up because the characters are experiencing an intense emotion, and it works so well. You really sold the bit of him going from genuine surprise to choosing to finally take up the fight he decided to pick.

Poor guy, when he doubles over at the end of his rant. And I like how even though we're looking at Kinger from behind, I do get the impression that he's concerned by this in his body language? It's just very neat.

God, the panel of Kinger looking down at Caine and asking if he's hurt, and you can tell he is just so fucking done with this situation. And in response, Caine's reaction—oh my God, that face drives me absolutely wild. And the way you actually did show his fingers digging into his arms and clipping, like I'd written down. aaaaaaaaaa I love it so much!

The way that you emphasize, Kinger taking that breath before really getting into the fucking lecture is just real good.

I am in love with Caine's little like flinch when he tries to make the excuse of this being Kinger's code's fault and not his. The little like quirk of his upper jaw "eyebrows" and the way that little bit of shading in the interior part of the lower jaw really emphasizes this expression. Just love that.

And it's great because then after Kinger really gets into it, you can see how his words are pretty much immediately wrecking Caine's defenses here. The way Caine immediately goes from like angry and defensive to more sad kicked puppy. HOOOOOOO the panel where Kinger mentions the mind files and you include that beat of him catching on the thought and having to take a moment before he says the next part does such a good job of emphasizing the thing.

AAAAA which does indeed result in the next panel of Caine really genuinely looking like a kicked puppy. And I like that you included the little glitches to help emphasize that this is causing a lot of emotion for him, because, you know, it is! GOD the last panel thank you so muuuuch. This hits the exact gravity of the phrase I was going for, and the shading does so fucking much. And the way having the shot be from a little below Kinger really emphasizes how heavy it is. And then the way it contrasts with Caine looking down and how he shrinks. The perspective is really good. The perspective is doing a lot of work here, and I'm a big fan.