Chapter Text
Right off the bat I'm already finding it hard to introduce myself. I've never quite settled on a name. Not that it would matter if I had one. I've spent the quiet hours mulling it over, thinking up new names and titles, trying them out in pretend conversations with myself. I think part of me doesn't ever want to settle on one. As long as it's undecided it's at the very least something to think about, and safe topics to think about are like food to me these days, food that's harder and harder to come by.
I guess the easiest introduction would just be describing what I am. Or at least my current theory. The Digital Circus is a game, I can tell that much, and from what I can recall from the hazy, dim, flickers of memory I have from the real world I seem to be stuck in what most games call "spectator mode". Unlike all the other players, I never got a body. A voice. A name. Any way to interact with the Digital Circus at all. No, I just watch. Every second, every minute, every hour, every day, I watch.
I've tried everything I can to get somebody's attention. Not even Caine seems to realize I'm here. I've screamed out (or at least, what I interpret as screaming) every possible thing I can think of that would get a reaction out of him. Nothing. I mean I guess he could just be pretending not to hear me, but that doesn't seem like him. Though who really knows with that guy.
To explain, it works like this: I get my pick of which player to spectate, flicking through them one by one like channels on an old TV. I just have to shout "NEXT!" or "BACK!" in my mind and *click* suddenly I'm following someone else. Seems to be limited to human players. As much as I wish I could see what Caine and Bubble are up to behind the scenes, they're off limits.
I do also get another choice, a seemingly small one, but an important one to me. Option one is to watch over my subject's shoulder like some disembodied ghost, tethered to their movements (I can't go more than about ten feet away). Option two is to watch through their eyes, seeing and hearing everything they do. At first I much preferred the former: an invisible specter floating (relatively) freely through the air. My own person. Watching from the sidelines. Conversely, it took some getting used to watching from a player's perspective. It's a disorienting feeling if the person whose eye you're peering out of suddenly decides to turn their head when you weren't expecting. Nonetheless it over time became my much preferred method. I'll admit it's a guilty pleasure of mine to pick a player and spend a day or two straight gazing out of their eyes, pretending I'm them. A little game I like to play to pass the time.
It all started one day while I was spectating Jax during a conversation he was having with Kinger. I was somewhat zoned out, only half paying attention as a listened, but then, like a daydream made real, something magic. Three consecutive times I was was able to perfectly guess the snarky, sarcastic comment Jax was going to make before he said it aloud, and for the first time I can remember it almost felt like I was having a conversation. I was thinking something, it was said out loud, someone else actually heard it, looked me right in the eye, and responded to it! It's a thrill I've been chasing ever since.
Nowadays I do it almost all the time, with whoever I'm spectating. I try to predict what they're about to say or do, just for those rare, fleeting moments where it lines up just right. Those moments where I think something, they do it. I think something, they say it. For a few seconds I get to pretend like I'm actually in control. Interacting. But then of course they always have to turn their head some way I didn't see coming, make some comment I didn't expect, and the illusion breaks. But I can't help continuing to try.
My favorite by a considerable margin has got to be Ragatha, because she's by far the best person in here. I like trying to think how she does. She likes to connect with the others, bring out the best in them. She also likes to play along with Caine's little games. Get in character. And I need that, everyone in The Circus does, it lets us all forget for a moment or two how trapped we are. On a lot of Caine's adventures I'll watch through her eyes, and if I'm feeling up for it, I'll play along too. Pretend Caine's characters are real and like I'm doing something that matters. Sometimes I'll pretend I'm her conscience: giving her advice and support even though I know she can't hear me. I need that. I don't know what I'll do if she-
Right, sorry, back on subject! My least favorite to spectate... Well, I was about to say Zooble, as the most recent arrival Zooble's never up to anything but moping, but my real least favorites are the ones I try my hardest to forget about. The ones that are nearly impossible to think of as players: the abstracts. In truth, most players I can spectate are down there in the cellar, abstracted. Skittering and staring into the dark with swarms of multicolored eyes. I hate them. I flick past them as fast as I can whenever I get to them in the list, frantically shouting "NEXT!" in my head and trying not to look. I wish I had eyes I could close. When I'm down there I swear to god some of them can see me. Those horrible rainbow eyes lock right onto me.
Am I able to abstract? What would even happen to me if I did? Would it finally give me a body? Would I cease to be? Or would I just become some deranged, feral consciousness wandering the digital circus like a ravenous ghost? No one would even know it's there but I-
No.
I try not to think about it. That seems to be the going policy for all the players in the Digital Circus if they want to stay sane and unabstracted: don't think about it. "It" being a pretty wide range of subjects, the topics with jagged edges and pointy bits.
So what should I try thinking about now?
Well, there's one clarification that keeps bugging me: a while back I said that "unlike most players I never got a body", but that's not necessarily true. I could very well be the only one stuck like this, but for all I know there could be others. There could be hundreds just like me and I'd have no way to tell. No one would. I think about that a lot sometimes. Maybe I've got siblings out there and I'm not as alone as I think. Maybe they're all thinking the same thing.
But, on second thought, don't think about that either.
As desperate as I am for something, anything to think about as I sit here as a disembodied mind, I know there's a whole maze of thoughts out there that need to be pulled away from like a hot stove. And that's just how "life" in the Digital Circus is. Keep yourself entertained. Don't think about it.
I used to fantasize a lot about the day Caine would find me in here. I kept hoping that at any moment, out of nowhere, Caine would check his watch and with usual wacky enthusiasm say something along the lines of "Well, well, what have we here!? Looks like we've had a player I missed! Quite the oopsie on my part! Let's get 'em a body lickety split and get everyone acquainted!"
I've gone over the scenario hundreds, maybe thousands of times in my head. How I'd introduce myself to everyone. What name I'd pick. All the advice I could give each and every one of them from the months I'd spent watching them (not to mention, whether or not I'd even tell them that I had spent months watching them). I would still be trapped here just like the rest of them, but at least my actions would matter to someone. Even if it's just a couple of strangers in a digital world someone would know I'm here. But as each day passes that fantasy just seems more and more ridiculous.
Nowadays I mostly wonder if I even exist in any sense. But I must, right? My thoughts must be coming from somewhere. There must exist some mind that thinks it's me. Whether that's a human brain hooked up to a headset or a set of code running on a processor, my mind is somewhere, right? Even if it is alone. Existing only to spectate and be entertained.
And really that's all I'm doing right now: entertaining myself. Monologuing to nobody. Orating a pretend biography out loud to no one. Not sure why I'm doing it.
Well, that's not true, I know exactly why I'm doing this, I'm just embarrassed to admit it. There's this new fantasy I have that maybe, if this is a game, if I just exist as code somewhere, maybe all these thoughts I have aren't just going into the void. Maybe they're getting logged somewhere, written into some text file in some obscure folder, buried among the data. My dream is that some day, someone finds it. Reads it. I don't care who. I don't care if they skim it over and forget about it in an instant. If someone reads it, it will mean someone knows I exist. It means I can know that I exist.
If someone is able to read this, it means I'm more than just a spectator.