chiruyuki

Kazuha: Lesromantic + Bisexual (AKA 75% gay)

Haibara/Shiho: Agender + Aromantic

Mitsuhiko and Conan/Shinichi: Homoromantic + Bicurious

Heiji: Bicurious

Ran: Bisexual

Sera: Transmasc

In this timeline, I'm guessing Conan was given a Prescript by chance, and it all just went downhill from there . . .

Sure, you could say that I need to write for myself, but I want to share my creations with the world, and if the world doesn't care, then why should I?

Spoiler Warning for Episode 9!

Obligatory Disclaimer: I don't hate anyone behind the production of TADC, such as Gooseworx. This was just a random idea I had that kinda developed against my will. Like The Tumour or whatever.

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Yeah, I'm not even gonna bother with an introduction, I'm just gonna get right into it. You know what would've been really cool?

If the TADC cast were all dead, and their brain scans were part of a project that aimed to [attempt to] immortalise dead people. So, when their bodies died but their brains' neural activities remained for a couple minutes to an hour, they were all scanned with their families' consent in the name of research before the plug was pulled on all of them.

However, the project, which was led by a research agency -- C&A -- would be publically abandoned in the early 2000s due to concerns about it leading to total fascism and a stark increase in dictatorships. Caine and Abel would've been attempts at creating an AI that could work without human guidance in order to keep the scans stimulated at all times to preserve the quality of the research, although Caine would end up consuming Abel as he goes rogue. An unexpected variable, but not a game-ending one.

The truth is, however, the project is in an indefinite hiatus, meaning that the circus' servers are still being powered, keeping it active. So, at the end, the final scene of the show would introduce a new character that joins the circus in 2026, the implications of such an ending scary, but depressingly unsurprising.

What would abstraction be, then? Abstraction would occur when the brain scans of a character become corrupted, meaning that it's reversible by either fixing the files or replacing them. The corruptions would most likely occur due to anomalies in their scans generated by their extreme distress, making their data unreadable [hence the trippy colours and Blackspace-esque area as demonstrated by Jax].

It remains as a metaphor for suicide, of course, but also toys around with other ideas, such as "the act itself is not truly permanent, even when the victim's dead".

So, when Jax abstracts, it'd be reversed by Pomni who repairs his files using administrative powers that Caine does not have (her will to save him gets translated to the command for restoring corrupted files). The severity of file corruption would be determined by the abstraction's appearance. The closer an abstraction is to their normal appearance, the higher the chance one would have with attempting to successfully restore them. So, Jax would probably resemble a distorted rabbit, retaining some of his body's light purple.

When it comes to Pomni's arrival, and the current year being 2026; time in the circus doesn't have to move the same as the real world. It can easily be perceived as such by the members, but in reality be a lot faster -- they think it's only been a couple of months, but that could easily have been a couple of years. The researchers would also have no qualms altering the flow of time within the circus, leading to a distorted sense of it within each member. Perhaps a scene of them arguing about how long it's been since Pomni's arrival could occur?

Furthermore, I think that when Caine dies, everything he created would go with him, as it's all an extension of himself. Therefore, the cast would end up trapped inside the "default stimulation plane" that the researchers had created for everyone to use and develop [as Caine obviously would've built the current circus we know and love from what he first received, but wouldn't have deleted it as he lacks the powers to delete anything].

He's not fully gone, but the cast don't know that; they don't know how to restore Caine from the "recycling bin" or how to load backups, not with their administrative powers, even though they have more permissions than Caine -- such as the ability to delete things. Hence, in their eyes, he's essentially gone. Permanently. Until the researchers restart the project and restore the status quo, of course.

Caine's lack of permissions is due to the researchers wanting to prevent him from messing with any of the data outside of the simulation; they carefully curated what he can and can't do to prevent devastating events such as the loss of Abel from reoccurring.

So, hints that would point toward this may be:

- Every member of the circus thinking they're in purgatory/heaven/hell/the afterlife.

- A religious character believing that they're in purgatory waiting to be judged, or in the first layer of it -- the waiting room, designed to keep waiting souls content in the meantime. Hence, they'd frequently ask when it was their turn to be judged, linking in real nicely with Caine's behaviour from earlier episodes [viewing himself as the candy kingdom's God, prioritising his wants and opinions above the cast's, etc].

- A character having a crisis over believing that all their beliefs about the afterlife were proven wrong.

- Every character recalling some event that should've killed them, such as a self-induced car crash, an argument in the kitchen gone wrong, fatal cancer, etc.

- Some characters expressing a strong desire to return to the living world again, or a strong desire to be able to pass on peacefully rather than live again, sick of life.

- Memories never fading no matter how long they'd been inside the circus.

- Some remembering their final moments -- such as the ringing of an ambulance, their blood pooling beneath them, their desperate call to the police, their lives flashing before their eyes, etc.

- Caine trying to override his restrictions for an adventure by accident, resulting in "ACCESS DENIED" and error screens being plastered all around him.