Chapter Text
Kaufmo didn't realize when he was again.
He just ‘was.’
There was memory, sensation, touch, pain… it all came rushing back in a flurry of churning and spiraling until that sensation of being took form. It felt like being born, if one could experience it as a person with agency and awareness. Reborn maybe… It wasn't what he was before, but it wasn't new either. It was what he remembered being when he… abstracted. That was the word. Abstracted.
He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be alive. He had resigned to his fate, and he had decided he was done. There was no relief. There was no exit. There was no…
He was Kaufmo.
He was alive again.
Kaufmo fell to the ground with a rush, sticky black tar that once clung on his body and limbs losing its grip on his chubby clown form as he fell spiraling towards a checkerboard ground. It made a gross, sticky ‘schlock’ sound as it unhinged him from his perch. It was like he could feel his body discarding mass, like he was leaping without a Bungie cord into a new, unknown abyss. It was at once liberating and also horrifying.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” He screamed out, surprised mid-fall that he once again had a voice. That he once again was SOMETHING. He recognized himself as he fell. He recognized his tone. He felt it roll up his artificial lungs into his throat and out his cartoon clown mouth. He smiled as he fell, laughing awkwardly.
God. This was horrifying.
He slammed into the digital checkerboard floor with a comical honk, his belly acting like a cushion as it squeaked loudly like a clown nose as he bounced against the surface. Whatever hope he had of being in the real world was dashed away. He was still in the circus. He still hadn't left. The realization made him want to seed his way back into the tar, to settle back in and slumber for another trillion years.
Kaufmo groaned in pain, his limbs shaky and sore. He wasn't actually hurt. In the real world, his bones would be broken, and he'd have some kind of internal bleeding. His brain would be mush inside his cranium and he’d die slowly from agonizing pain. The pain of the circus never did damage like you'd find on LiveLeak, but it was still enough for him to see birds and stars. Literally. He shook his head, dashing those cartoony reminders away.
He rolled over on his back, looking up at the nest that he fell from. A nest? Is that what it was? The familiar black shape of his once-abstracted form dripped down to him, inky black tar with a dead drool to it that looked out of place compared to the dark, digital spike-adorning morph he once knew.
Maybe this was some kind of second stage. A metamorphosis of some kind. A change?
He remembered having more eyes, having the awareness of everything around him but unable to distinguish anything about it in his mind. It was like being a God and in a coma, able to see everything around him but unable to process it mentally. Like he was just a collector of data, but lacked any kind of function to understand it.
It was strange to experience time again. He could feel the seconds moving along. In abstraction, he alternated between dreams, memories, and dark creeping scenarios that reminded him more of hell. They all ran concurrent with each other. It could have been mistakes of the past made manifest, reliving cringe-inducing misunderstandings and looks of disgust that Kaufmo was all too familiar with even in the real world. It was best when it was dark, or when they were in the water. The water felt nice.
“Huh, I remember the water.” He said to the open circus. He smiled. He knew there was someone to thank for that. It wasn’t Caine. Or was it? He didn’t want it to be Caine.
His voice echoed out like he was in a chasm. It was overwhelmingly dark in the circus. The bright vibrant colors he was used to had grown dull, scarred, and lifeless. He lifted his head a bit, soreness still in his artificial spine from his fall. His gloved hand reached up to his neck, and he let his eyes wander the circus in a spiral, looking from left to right to make out any kind of foundation to make sense of what he was seeing.
It didn’t look good.
The lights of the circus were all out, bulbs blown out like they were over-powered with fake electricity of a digital program to an extremity. What remained were shattered glass remanents, still locked into the sockets by their aluminum screws.
There were scorched craters in the ground and the dull-colored building blocks that littered the main area, tales of a battle in a place that used to be so filled with artificial life and whimsy. This felt so wrong, so antithetical to everything he remembered. How long had he been gone? What had happened to their home?
Kaufmo sat up, blinking as he looked around in the darkness, “H-Hello? Anybody? Caine!”
Surely, if he was back, others had to be as well. Right? They wouldn’t just leave him in that sloppy black mess.
The AI ringleader of the Digital Circus would usually zip straight to a person when called. It used to feel like he was everywhere, watching everything. A modern surveillance state apparatus in the form of a cartoon toothy monstrosity. Paintings and pictures with eye motifs that told you nothing and everything. But now?
Nothing.
Kaufmo felt truly alone in the circus for the first time.
“Jax? Ragatha?! Hello!” He called out again, the quiver in his shout showing how scared he actually was. He felt his knees go inward, and he hugged himself in a fear that ran through his body like an electric shock.
There was a shining glint in the corner of his eye, and he locked in on the strange distraction. Kaufmo sat up on his shaky legs, the drip of the black tar he was reborn from still staining his wobbly clown body. He hated how reflective of himself his avatar was. Everyone else in the circus got strange and wonderful designs. His always felt like a joke, like it always meant him to be a focus of ridicule and shame. Pagliacci anthropomorphized.
He waddled over to the glint, and soon he was sighing with disappointment when he realized it was the mirror.
Everyone came to the mirror when they first arrived. The sensation of being a new THING was one thing, but seeing it was something else. He remembered when Jax arrived, how he said he looked ‘stupid.’
Kaufmo froze as he got close enough to make himself out in the darkness, however. It wasn’t what he expected.
Before him stood Kaufmo, clown extraordinaire with a pointed yellow cap, big red lips, pearl white skin, a yellow clown suit with red poms and a frilled blue collar. His typical static avatar that was given to him when he was stupid enough to put on those dusty VR goggles in that abandoned office.
But then… There was the other stuff. Black stains on his body that stretched up both his hands. There were lines in his neck and cheek where the abstracted rainbow eyes peeked and dashed about, looking around him with their own awareness. He had to focus, but soon he realized it was his own awareness peeking from those eyes under his control. He could see from them as easily as he could his own black beady dots that were originally designed with his head. They were a separate entity, yes, but they were also a part of him. He could feel it. He could feel its tendrils squirming inside him. It was a stain and a tattoo all in one, a mark of his… attempt.
“What the fuck…” He whispered, placing a finger to one of the monstrous eyelids to hold it open. The blue and yellow eye looked up at him, as if annoyed at his intrusion, shifting as it slid from his grip to another part of his clown body.
The black stains swirled and moved around him, as if they were a living birthmark he had no choice to wear, to navigate his own body with. They swam about him like his skin and clothes were water, opening up in new places and spiraling around his gut. He was disgusted in one way, comforted in another.
Kaufmo attempted to focus, to move the abstracted forms on his body around. He found he could, and he watched as the lines and eyes along himself shifted into place at one of his hands. He looked down at it with curiosity and silent terror, watching as his hand become a mosaic of eyes looking at him with the focus of a tiger on the hunt, watching him for any sudden reactions. He wanted to yank his arm free of himself, to discard this stain even if it meant losing the limb.
His breathing quickened, and he found himself back up away from the mirror, his other arm reaching to the limp to yank it away. The eyes and blackness defended itself, spiraling away from his grip so that they could illustrate something very clear to the clown:
‘We are a part of you whether you like it or not.’
He realized the eyes were not acting on his weakness, attempting to overtake or destroy him. He felt a sense of fragile unity, a mutuality that seemed to carry warning and promise of peace under conditions. When he first abstracted, he remembered them consuming him like a virus. It was like he was falling into a pit, and then he realized he was floating in a multi-colored space out of time and reality. It was comforting and serene, and he remembered letting it take him.
This wasn’t that. It was something else. Something new that somehow felt like it had always been a part of him.
His abstraction just stared up at him now, shifting back to a ball at his hand, and when he focused, he realized he could look at himself like his own mirror.
He looked so dumb and confused.
Kaufmo sighed, “Well, I guess you’re part of the party now little buddy.” He said to the abstraction, looking back up to the mirror.
It was then he noticed that the eyes all clustered together acted like quite a bright light, a rainbow cacophony of color that made the details in the dark space stand out amongst everything dim. It was like one of the sensual nightlights Ribbit would have in her room. Like that… Like that night.
Stop thinking about it.
Kaufmo nodded, looking towards the hall. It was time to look for the others.
-K-
When Kaufmo found the mural, he felt his throat seize up. Upon a wall in the hall was detailed paintings of the others. His friends. Well, the people he thought were his friends. He saw circus members before his time, some after, but what scared him were the ones he recognized: Jax, Ribbit, Gangle, Kinger… Himself. His render was next to Ribbit.
Kaufmo frowned, finding it hard to look at her. He wished he could tell her everything, how he felt…
It was a remembrance mural. A funeral pyre made flat and beautiful, splotched in paint and with loving care. Gangle’s image wasn’t as well rendered as the others, but that was because she was the artist of the group. Whoever drew her did a fine job, but it was a different style from the others.
When he looked at Jax, he felt something churn in his gut. It was a mix of guilt and contempt, and then guilt at having that very contempt for his friend. It all started that night. It all started with a knock at the door. God, if he could have just shut up and kept everything to himself!
I fucked everything up.
He worked up the courage to look at her. At Ribbit.
He lifted his abstracted lantern hand to look at her clearly, seeing it as his penance.
Ribbit’s image was… Vandalized. There was a red paint can on the ground before him, and he saw that someone had taken a hand print and smeared Ribbit’s face in the acrylic, trying to wipe away the face and remove it from the group. The hand prints were the same cartoony four fingered nonsense everyone had, so it was hard to distinguish it. Who had something against Ribbit? Was it Jax?
Kaufmo was surprised to see Kinger on the mural. He was a part of the circus long before Ragatha. Longer than anyone really… He had always seemed like the immortal one, protected by his short-term memory loss or insanity or… Maybe both.
“They finally got you, old man.” Kaufmo said with a soft, weak smile. He hoped that the anthropomorphic chess piece could finally rest. They had drawn him next to another chess character. Kaufmo didn’t know who it was, but that they were so similar made him think the two were possibly connected. Perhaps a wife or girlfriend.
Kaufmo sat at the other side of the hall, pressed against the wall just looking at the mural. He stared at it for hours, soaking in all the unknown hardship and horror, the loss and grief, the past made into something tangible in a landscape made of ones and zeroes. There was artistry and love in this painting, and he wanted to appreciate that love with every bit of his attention he could manage. He stared at it for hours, memorizing every detail, every mistake, every little speck of misplaced paint or shaky line rendering. He imagined the tears running down someone’s face as they tried to paint their friend or lover without crying. He wondered if anyone cried for him.
There was no way Jax would have taken part in this. He seemed beyond saving by the time Kaufmo felt his own sanity go. Plus the mockery… The crude insults and lack of understanding for WHY Kaufmo was looking for the exit so badly.
“It was for you, you asshole!” He suddenly screamed at Jax’s smiling portrait, feeling wet tears fill his eyes, “Why couldn’t you take the hint!”
That was then Kaufmo heard something coming from deeper in the hall. Something in the dorm rooms…
-K-
The individual rooms were in vastly different shapes of disrepair.
Kaufmo’s room, unfortunately, was at the very end of the hall, so he had to make a death march of a witness to the remains of his friends and found family.
As he started down the hallway, his first stop was Ragatha’s room. Besides Kinger, Ragatha was one of the seniors of the circus. She had been there when he first joined, and she was there when he abstracted. There was no X over her face, and when Kaufmo pushed the door open gently, he saw that her room was mostly cleaned out. Her pictures were missing from the walls, and her Piano was gone. A trunk was sitting open at the end of her bed, and her mattress was stripped of the covers. It didn’t look like she left in a hurry, which was good. That meant that she was hopefully alright.
He hoped.
The next room was Jax’s, and his door was caved in and splintered on the ground. Despite that, Kaufmo could still make out the giant red X over his face. He took a step in, looking around the trashed room. His bed was on the side, large claw marks scarred over his mattress and sheets. His desk was cracked in half, and the collection of pictures he had on the wall were gone. Kaufmo sighed, turning about to leave.
Across from Jax was a picture of a jester giving a cartoony frown that was utterly ridiculous, “I feel you, sister.” Kaufmo muttered with a smirk, pushing open the door to the jester’s room. Kaufmo didn’t recognize her, and figured she probably came into the circus after he abstracted. This room was also completely cleared out of stuff, but Kaufmo’s eyes were immediately drawn to a wall. This Jester had seemed to have been doing some accounting of time passed in the circus.
It seemed that she had started in 2017, but the years went on all the way to 2026, “God…” Kaufmo whispered to himself, lifting his hand to the written years. He felt against the 2026, and saw that it was completely dry. This jester had been gone a long time. Maybe years longer…
He passed Kinger’s room completely. Kinger never slept in there anyway, and he wasn’t sure he could handle another look at someone who was abstracted.
Next stop was Zooble. Kaufmo saw the bright red X over Gangle’s face next to Zooble’s room and sighed. He knew Gangle would check out eventually, in his heart of hearts, but he still pitied the girl. She was so shy and sad… And Jax just lept on it as soon as she spawned in.
Once he pushed the door inside, he was surprised to find that most of Zooble’s stuff was scattered around. Arms, legs, antenna… They had made a mess of their room. That wasn’t like Zooble… The playbox person he knew always seemed confident and zeroed in on the surrounding situation. On one of their walls there was a picture drawn of Zooble and Gangle together, holding ‘hands,’ and with a small note next to it he saw the words, “I’m sorry.” Written in red.
“At least you found love, Zoobs.”
Kaufmo sat on the ground and sighed. He wondered why he was even back. There was nothing left for him here. No Caine, no Ribbit, no new people… Nothing.
It was then he heard the dripping.
He turned his head about, looking towards a crate at the corner of the room. It was Zooble’s never ending trunk of body parts, an endless supply that they could draw from to attach and replace their parts when they tired of another. Kaufmo never really understood gender dysmorphia, but Zooble had explained it to him once or twice. They had tried to explain it to Caine many times, but the toothy ring leader never really seemed to get it. He just supplied Zooble with endless options and washed his hands of it.
The crate had some kind of strange rigging to it, positioned above the trunk. Kaufmo stood up and walked over towards the crate and strange contraption that hovered above it.
Suspended by Zooble’s parts, wrapped tight with multi-colored arms and legs, were many vials of some strange pink fluid all tied together in a tight bundle. They each had a small hose syphoned from their tips, spiraling down into a drip feed that was dripping slowly into a hole at the top of the Zooble crate.
Kaufmo was scared to look inside, but he had to know. It had to be done. His quivering hands, one cast in black of abstraction and the other in his normal white glove, reached down slowly to open the box. It creaked as he opened it, and Kaufmo held his breath in fear about what he was about to see.
The sparse light from the room settled on the isosceles cranium of his mix & match friend.
Oh my God.
The recognizable ‘face’ of Zooble blinked up at him, their eyes awash and hazy with the pink liquid that had been dripping profusely down onto them for who knows how long. Days, months, years? It was hard to tell. Their eyes were bulbous and fuzzy, as if Zooble was taking an extra amount of time to focus in on Kaufmo’s face, “Wha… Buh… Kaufmoes? What’re… Wherreee.” They mumbled like they were stoned off their ass, unable to settle on his face with any kind of solid recognition.
Zooble.
Kaufmo couldn’t help himself. He squeezed Zooble’s head to his chest, falling back on his rump with a sob as he started to openly weep in the center of the room, clutching them tight. Zooble was still here. Zooble was here and he wouldn’t have to be alone. He stroked the back of their head, and he could feel the soft vibrations of Zooble trying to speak against his chest.
“Why… How… Gangle…”
-K-
Zooble was in no condition to explain things at the moment. They were definitely high, drifting in and out of conciousness as they mumbled confused questions that made no sense and the name, ‘Gangle’ over and over. Kaufmo had found a label on one vial he had snatched from the contraption with the words, ‘Stupid Sauce’ in big bold letters. Kaufmo figured it must have been a useful relic from one adventure he missed, something the other Circus members used to get stoned. He felt a small tinge of jealousy at that.
Could I have asked for weed this whole time, Caine?
So, while Zooble was working the stupid sauce out of their system, Kaufmo had rigged their head into a sort of backpack. Using their limbs as straps, he crossed them over his chest and settled the isosceles head of his friend behind him so they could literally watch his back as he explored the circus ruins. It was nice to have someone there, even if they were zonked out of their mind. Just feeling the slumbering vibrations of Zooble muttering and rambling against his back gave him hope that more of his friends were out there.
Once Zooble was fastened securely to his back, he fished a sack out of their crate and started pushing in as many limbs, attachments, eyes, and parts Zooble would need. He figured he couldn’t carry the entire crate with him, so he’d have to hopefully pick out enough parts for Zoobs to manage.
Kaufmo made his way back to the main hall, looking around. He placed the sack in a recognizable corner for the time being, noting to return once he found a way out.
Nothing had changed. It was still bleak, broken, and quiet inside the ruins of the digital circus. The sad clown sighed, waddling his way over towards the entrance flap at the head of the big tent. Hopefully, he could sit out by the stars and enjoy himself while he brainstormed a new plan and waited for Zooble to come back to normalcy. He had so many questions.
When Kaufmo came outside, he was stunned. The sky was black… Completely empty of stars or the moon. It was like some great beast had swallowed the digital world, and nothing was natural anymore. It was surreal and unnerving, the lizard part of his brain noting how unnatural this was even for his cartoon existence.
The only light he could see was this ball of blinding flame hovering over what looked to be a long swervy road leading from the circus boundaries. It was a ball of sheer, brilliant light that was near impossible to look at, but enough to illuminate his surroundings. In the distance, his mouth hung agape as he saw structure after structure, island upon island of digital landscapes that he didn’t remember being there before he abstracted.
The Circus was a ruin, but the world seemed to go on and stretch through the void into countless, abundant structures. Some of the floating islands were completely blacked out, like the circus, and some seemed to be lit with power. Kaufmo thought he could make out what looked to be a baseball stadium in the far horizon.
“Wow…” He said with a snort. He was at once both mesmerized and unnerved, knowing that the implications of all these new additions and subtractions to the digital world he used to call home, “Caine has been busy.”
Kaufmo heard a small gasp to his right.
He spun, looking down a hillside towards the edge of the Circus island. There was a black, amorphous shape with hints of what looked to be a humanoid figure. They stood with their legs turned inwards in fear, hands to their chest as the static outlines of abstraction seemed to spear and dart out from them in reaction to their visceral fear.
Kaufmo couldn’t breathe.
He recognized the gasp on the sound alone, and he started making his way down the grassy knoll towards the shape. Green, black, rainbow eyes… A splash of red at her neck. He knew who it was, and his pace seemed to grow faster and faster as he closed in the space between them. He lifted his hand when he was ten feet from the figure, stopping to stare at her, merging all the abstracted eyes into his lantern to get the full view of his friend. His best friend… Ribbit.
She sobbed, and Kaufmo sprinted the space between them, enveloping his froggy friend in a hug he had wanted to give her for years. He squeezed her tight, and she returned the hug with all the force she could give. He held her so tight she was on her toes, and she clutched him with his own matched desperation. Both were weeping into each other, nuzzled into each other’s necks as the salty tears, the warmth, and the quakiness of their reunion saturated them both. The fear, abandonment, anger, and sorrow seemed to completely wash away as he soaked in the love of his friend.
“Kaufy… W-why are we back?!” She asked, looking into his eyes with a shuddering sob.
One of her eyes looked up at him with clear abstraction, the other swelling with tears.