"Are we rolling?" Pomni asked her NPC camera operator.
"Ready in 3... 2... 1... cue."
Pomni stood up straighter, motioned to the castle behind her, and adopted a professional-sounding tone. "This... is Candy Kingdom. At first glance, a saccharine society with a just leader. However, digging below its sugarcoated exterior, you find a sticky, syrupy scandal." She looked down at the clipboard she had been holding behind her back and said, "Okay, cut. Hmm..." she looked back at the script. "Just leader... we've been doing all this alliterating and we hit a snag right there."
"Seems okay to me," the NPC replied.
"Of course it seems okay to you-- you're The Okay Guy. Oh, I know what!" She took the pen off the board and made a mark on the script. "A sweet society... with a... saccharine sovereign. Yeah, that's way better. Okay, re-shoot." She returned to her presenter posture. "Tell me when."
"Okay, ready in 3... 2... 1... cue."
"This... is Candy Kingdom. At first glance, a sweet society with a saccharine sovereign. However, digging below its sugarcoated exterior, you'll find a sticky, syrupy scandal. Okay, cut, that's good."
"Yep, that's okay," said Okay Guy.
Pomni flipped through the clipboard, "Let's see, interviews..." She accidentally skipped past the Candy Kingdom asset manifest and landed on Good Old Fashioned Softball instead. As she corrected her mistake, a picture caught her eye; an NPC copy of Jax. A flood of memories came back to her, one in particular: the real Jax debuted her vote-by-plebiscite maid outfit during this stage of the Lightning Round. Not really thinking about it, she picked the camera off the tripod and said, "Take five, Okay Guy."
"Okay."
She took a deep breath and raised her hand. "Asset storage for Good Old Fashioned Softball." Bringing her hand back down again, a portal opened and she walked through it, ending up in the requested area. She looked along the wall and beheld the NPC copies of the Circus Performers Caine had used for the opposing team. There was Evil Pomni, Evil Ragatha, Evil Kinger, Evil Orbsman, and Evil Jax. They all stood motionless, "A" posing.
Pomni walked up to Jax's model and just looked at it for a while. She half expected her to walk off her slot and start cracking predictable jokes. "What?" she said to it, "No 'asset storage, more like pain in the ass snore-age, 'cos this room is about as dead as a Christian Minecraft server'?" She chuckled at her own joke. Channelling Jax, she turned to Ragatha's lookalike, "Hey, Evil Ragatha, was that a giant centipede I saw driving off in your monster truck?"
"Hey, Kinger, I got just one word for you-- Bongcloud! What's that do for ya?"
She turned to Orbsman, "What the hell are you even supposed to be? Some kind of sentient ball-man? I played that game, it sucked."
She reached her own copy, "Hey, Little Miss Sunshine, why so serious? You forget your crystal ball this morning? Did your boyfriend Abstract?!" She looked at her copy's expression; in its neutral posture, it didn't look evil, it looked sad, like it could start crying at any moment. She felt the same feeling coming up in her. "Hey, come on, I was kidding! What, you... you can't take a joke?" She suddenly became extremely aware that she was all alone here. She heard the remains of her question reverberate off the walls into nothingness.
Pomni discovered too late how to get along with Jax. Since Jax fancied herself something of a Bugs Bunny type, Pomni had realised, you don't fight Bugs Bunny. You don't fight him because he uses that and reverses it on you. You have to match wits with him, which is why he and Daffy Duck pair so well together. She had once posted on Tumblr that Bugs was a fae and Daffy a chaos deity. She had discovered that she needed to be the Daffy Duck to Jax's Bugs Bunny. Everyone always pussyfooted around Jax or pushed against her snide remarks and rude behaviour, when what they should have been doing was matching wits. In this way, Jax probably knew the game mechanics of the Circus better than Kinger or even Caine. All it took was covering up a lifetime of trauma under a veneer of "quirky comic-relief character".
Pomni couldn't look at Jax anymore, she was more intently studying her döppelganger. How had Caine managed to create someone whose personality was such a polar opposite of her own. Everything that made Evil Pomni evil was simply a reversal of Pomni's regular personality. She needed more information.
"Hi, Pomni," Kinger greeted her as she walked into the drafting room, "Have you come to help with the library?"
"You guys are making a library for Carrington?" Pomni asked, "That's so cool!"
"Yeah!" Ragatha agreed, "We're still working out the building's appearance, then we'll get to work on the objects and NPCs."
"I'd love to help sometime, but I need Kinger for a minute."
"Sure," Kinger stood up and walked out into the atrium with her. "What's on your mind, Pomni?"
"Kinger, do you remember the time we had the Lightning Round with all the suggestions in the suggestion box?"
"Uh... kind of."
"Well, do you remember the softball game?"
"Oh yes, the Big Tops versus the Evil Big Tops."
"Do you have any idea how Caine made the evil versions of us?"
"Hm," Kinger looked thoughtful, "That's a good question. I assume he just copied our character files and flipped the integers. Why?"
"Because I was thinking about Evil Pomni... she was the perfect mirror image of me. Everything I liked, she hated. Everything I wouldn't do, she would. Kinger... is there some... sort of... copy... of all of our brain scans someplace?"
"Well, Caine would be the only one with access to the root directory. That's assuming Scratch and I even gave him admin privileges in the first place. But, Pomni?"
"Yeah?"
"I think I see where you're going with this. I understand that you miss Jax. I do, too... sometimes. But, even if we could reuse Lee's original brain scan file, and even if we could get that file running alongside Jax's character model, we would be talking about resetting Jax. She would be coming to the Circus for the first time, waking up on the stage after putting on that headset in wherever she put it on in Realspace."
Kinger sighed, "Basically, it wouldn't be the Jax we knew. Ribbit and Kaufmo won't be here to help her become who she was when you met her."
"Would that be so bad, though?" Pomni was beginning to cry.
"The other thing is, Jax would still be concerned about her Realspace self being in danger, running from... whatever it was she was running from. She would be just as terrified for her Realspace self still being in danger when she finds out she's a brain scan copy of Lee Mateo, terrified enough to make her Abstract again."
Pomni wiped a tear away, "You're right, Kinger. It... wouldn't be fair to her... making her go through all that again."
"The best we can do is just visit Jax in the Abstractorium occasionally. To remember all the good times we had with her while she was alive... I'm sure there's got to be a few."
"You know, a few minutes ago," Pomni admitted, "I was really wishing to hear some of Jax's bad jokes. This was while I was in the softball game asset storage. I was trying to think of what Jax would say if she were here, and--"
"Wh-wuh-Wait," Kinger interrupted, "You were in an asset storage room?"
"Uh... yeah... I... should I not... have been... in there?"
Kinger looked about as confused as a being with no face and only 2 eyes could look. "How did you even know about that?"
"Uh... be...cause I've been in one before?"
"Whu-- yuh-- you- you-you-you've-- y... well, when?"
"During the Candy Kingdom adventure. Jax and Gangle rammed the truck I was on and it clipped through the map and we ended up in asset storage."
"Who else was with you?"
"Gummigoo. That is, the NPC who was supposed to be the lead bad guy."
Kinger looked distant. "You've been inside asset storage..."
"Kinger," Pomni scoffed, "Is there something wrong with my being in there? I didn't want to go in there the first time, it was an accident."
"Cube collisions," Kinger said softly, "He said something about cube collisions... what was it?"
"Who did?"
"Scratch. There was something about cube collisions... something important. I just... I can't remember what it was." He looked pensively at the floor for a few moments, as though scanning his memories.
"Can't you just ask him?" Pomni offered.
"Well, I tried to talk to him about the project once... but... it seems that I'm the only one who remembers details. Ah, I'll figure it out later, I'm sure.
"But, yeah. I wouldn't feel very good about resetting any of us... especially not someone as extreme as Jax."
Pomni sighed heavily, "I guess I'm still working through losing her."
"We all are. Even if we don't show it."
"Thanks, Kinger."
"Anytime," he set his hand on Pomni's shoulder. "Now, did you want to help with the library?"
"Sure," Pomni smiled, "do you have a name for it yet?"
"We were thinking just 'Carrington Public Library'."
"How about Kinger Branch Library?"
"Name it after me?"
"Sure, why not? Libraries are supposed to be inspirational, and you've always been an inspiration to me. Ever since that day in Mildenhall Manor, you've believed in me when it seemed like no one else did."
"Thanks, Pomni," Kinger may have been smiling, but he was definitely tearing up.
As they re-entered the drafting room, Ragatha commented, "I heard what you were talking about, and I completely agree. I don't think I would have lasted past my first day if it hadn't been for you, Kinger."
"So, it's decided?" Pomni asked.
"Well," Kinger blushed, "If you say so."
"Plus," added Ragatha, "saying it's a branch library means we get to build more libraries later."
"Hey, yeah!" Pomni realised. "Wow, I've never been in charge of a whole town before."
She suddenly had a rather claustrophobic thought, "Um... this is a computer simulation, right?"
"Yeah," Kinger replied.
"Well, computers have kind of... not... a lot of space in them."
He chuckled, "Don't worry, Pomni. We have lots of space. Probably more than we had on Earth."
"Oh," Pomni looked relieved and surprised simultaneously. "Well, in that case, do we have a school yet? How 'bout parks? Community gardens?"
Ragatha and Kinger looked sheepishly at each other. "Uh, not yet," Ragatha admitted, "Oh, I know! How about we make you in charge of that, Pomni?"
"Sure!" she beamed. "Now, something I've always thought would be cool for libraries to have is activity rooms. Not like what the ones in Realspace usually have, which is usually nothing but a table and chairs, and you're not supposed to go in there except if you're part of, like, a book club or something." Pomni grabbed a pencil and a pad of graphing paper and began to sketch her idea.
Ragatha just smiled as she drew; she had never seen her so happy or so engaged before.
"See, I'm talkin', like, tables with board games already set up. Tabletop RPGs, Life, Monopoly, stuff you can just drop into without needing to set everything up."
"I used to love checkers," Ragatha added.
"Oh, yeah! Basically just a place where kids can go and blow off steam, right? Kids. Do we have any kids in Carrington?"
"We sure do!" Kinger replied, "I love kids. Queenie and I have two daughters in Realspace, and, quite possibly even grandchildren!"
"I love kids, too," said Ragatha, "I just never cared for having any of my own."
"Okay," Pomni sighed, focussed, "So, the next thing to make is a school. How many kids?"
"Oh," Kinger tried to remember, "about fifty."
"Fifty?!"
"Yeah," Ragatha remarked, "We've been pretty busy making townies."
"Mostly Ragatha, though," Kinger pointed out, "Caine and I have been mostly working on infrastructure."
"Okay, good, good," Pomni nodded as she flipped a page, "I can work with that. I'm assuming the townsfolk have a way of increasing their population on their own?"
Ragatha and Kinger looked at each other, "Uh... no."
Pomni looked up, anticipating their rationale for not allowing the NPCs to have children, "Storage issues?"
"Not... exactly," Ragatha replied. "I kinda... didn't... want... to make that happen."
Pomni looked at her, "Honey, a stagnant population is going to decline."
"I know that, it's just... I didn't want anyone to feel pressured into having kids. You know... like I was?"
Pomni huffed, "That's not going to happen. This is Carrington, the town that cares. There will be no tradcore families in this town, not so long as I'm city administrator."
"Administrator!" Kinger exclaimed, "That's it! That's what Scratch meant!"
"What?" Ragatha asked.
"Here," Kinger produced a folder from hammerspace under the desk. "Pomni, I want you to tell me who this is." He produced a portrait of a sad-looking yellow clown with a blue suit.
Without pausing, Pomni remarked, "Roscoe."
She stopped and thought for a moment. "How did I know that?"
Kinger brought out the other portraits and set them on the desk, "And the others?"
Pomni looked at the pictures and scratched her head in surprise. "I don't know how I know this, but..."
She pointed to the clown again, "Roscoe..."
Then, to a fuzzy green elephant with a worm-shaped trunk, "Raddle..."
Then, to a purple bird with two heads, "AJ..."
Finally to a yellow cartoon labrador, "Scratch."
Kinger put the pictures back in the folder and announced, "Pomni, you seem to have administrator privileges."
"Uh... what?"
"Admin privileges. While it's true that Caine opened the developer console up to all of us, so far only 3 of us have had any sort of access to the file directory above that: Caine, Scratch, and myself."
Pomni remained frozen in place, too flabbergasted to say anything more than, "What?"
"I'm not totally sure I understand it myself, but I suspected something was up when you told me you were able to get to an asset storage room."
"So..." Pomni spoke hesitantly, "when me and Gummigoo ended up clipping through the map in the Candy Kingdom... that gave me admin privileges?"
"No," Kinger replied, "You couldn't have ended up there at all if you weren't an admin. You would have had to use a developer terminal out in Realspace in order to get sent here with admin privileges. And those were only located in the C&A headquarters."
"I definitely wasn't copied into the Circus from a dev terminal. It was more like a ghost town."
"Yeah," Kinger agreed, "That doesn't sound like the place.
"Alternatively..." he thought for a moment, but discounted it, "No, no, that wouldn't be possible. At least, I think it wouldn't be possible."
"What wouldn't be possible?" Ragatha walked over to Pomni's side.
"Well... if you entered a different file folder. Theoretically, you could have gone from there to a higher level in the directory, and that would have given you admin creds automatically as a failsafe measure. Otherwise, you wouldn't have been able to get back into the simulation folder."
Pomni thought and offered, "The first day I was here... when Kaufmo Abstracted and I was... running from him... I, um... I found..."
"What?"
"I found what looked like an exit door. I went through it, but on the other side was just room after room of, like, suburban office Hell. Well, I just kept going through doors and going through doors, hoping to find a way out, and I remember finding a room with a computer in it. As I looked at it, it seemed like it was... talking to me. I couldn't move, I couldn't speak. Eventually, I just panicked and ran out the door, and the last door I opened sent me to the Void."
"Oh, my god," Kinger put a hand to his face and took a step forward. "You found the developer terminal inside the game... and that's what you brought me!"
Ragatha looked out of her element, "What? What's going on?"
"I already had admin privileges, I just needed a computer that was logged in. But, that was Caine's computer in the game. Everything that he was able to generate, everything he was able to do was processed on that computer. When you took that computer out of the office, Pomni, you took away his developer status. As you saw with Jax's portrait, he can still edit existing assets, but he can't make anything new anymore."
"So, you mean..." Pomni was trying to internalise all this new information, "you mean that I've had admin privileges, basically since day one?"
"That's right."
"What... does that mean?"
"Well, you saw for yourself just a minute ago," Kinger motioned to the folder, "You have access to the entire simulation. You can do anything."
"So... I'm... the new Caine?"
Kinger chuckled, "Well, yeah. You can summon portals, create new assets, reprogram existing elements, copy and paste things, basically everything Caine could do."
Ragatha laughed, "You're almost like god, Pomni."
Pomni, however, was vibrating with panic. The phrase "absolute power corrupts, absolutely" had been re-occurring in her mind over the past minute or so. She knew she alone couldn't be trusted with the powers of the entire Circus, not even with Kinger to check and balance.
"I don't want it!" she exclaimed, frantically, "I don't want to be the new Caine! I don't want that much power! Please, take it away from me! Please! Caine! Caine, can you hear me?! Snap your fingers or something so I don't have admin privileges anymore!" She collapsed to her knees in existential panic.
"Pomni?" Ragatha knelt down next to her, "Honey, it's going to be okay--"
"No, it's not!" Pomni quavered, "Absolute power corrupts, absolutely!"
"Kinger, she's going to Abstract-- do something."
"Hang on, hang on, I'm thinking!" he paced about the room for a moment. "Oh! I've got it!"
Kneeling down next to Pomni, he said gently, "Delegate your privileges."
"What?" Pomni looked at him.
"Delegate your privileges. You're concerned about having too much power. Fine, I would be worried, too, if I was suddenly told I was god. So, what you need to do now is bring everybody to a table in your mind... can you do that?"
Pomni shut her eyes, imagining Ragatha, Kinger, Zooble, Gangle, and Caine sitting with her around a circular conference table. "Okay, I see them."
"Now, look down at your chest and you'll see a gold star on your... jester outfit. Do you see it?"
"Yes."
"Okay, that's your administrator privilege sticker. You can't take it off, but... you have a sheet of these very same stickers, and you're going to go around the table and give one to everybody. You don't need to give one to me, because I already have one."
"Okay," she said aloud as she gave a sticker to everyone at the table in her mind-palace, "One for you, and one for you, and one for you..." She hesitated a moment. "Kinger?"
"Yes?"
"What would happen if I gave Caine one? Hang on..." as soon as she said that, Caine's image turned to static and then faded out. Pomni tried to bring him back, but she couldn't remember what he looked like. "He's gone!"
"Gone? From your mind?"
"Yeah."
"Oh, that means he doesn't want one."
"Wow," remarked Ragatha, "he's really serious about changing his ways, isn't he?"
Pomni opened her eyes to see Caine standing before her. Oddly, this did not startle her. "How long have you been standing there?"
"Long enough to know that you've delegated your administrator privileges to the rest of the cast," he replied, "Thank you for thinking of me, but I'm done making adventures for now. I'm more interested to see what you humans come up with. After all, that was the point of the simulation... wasn't it, dad?"
Kinger beamed, "It certainly is, son."
Pomni and Ragatha looked at each other, "Dad? Son?"
"Kinger programmed me," Caine explained, "and, after the... incident... he and I had a long talk and I decided I didn't want to be alone."
"So," Kinger added, "Queenie... er, Destiny and I have 2 daughters in Realspace, and I have a son here in the Circus."
Pomni twisted a smile onto her face, "That's... great, Kinger." After a second or two, however, she realised that she and Ragatha had each other, Zooble and Gangle had each other, but Kinger and Caine were alone. She thought that having a familial connection may help Caine understand humans a bit better, and Kinger could feel an attachment to someone other than his Abstracted wife. She replaced the forced smile with a real one, "That's really great."
Ragatha remarked, "So... we all have admin privileges now?"
"I think so," Pomni replied.
"Try making something," Kinger suggested.
"Okay." She held her hand up as though holding something and said, "Who wants pizza?" With that, a pizza box containing a delectable-looking veggie pizza appeared on her hand. "I've been craving one of these for about a week now."
"And now you have one!" Caine announced, "Admin privileges are great! As long as you use them responsibly."
"And this way," Pomni said, manifesting a table to set the box on, "I don't need to worry about having absolute power, because everyone else has it, too. Absolute power can corrupt a single person-- human or AI-- but spread the power around so everyone has it, and you can't bend others to your will."
Ragatha set the box down and each of them took a slice of pizza. "Here's to controlling our destinies," she remarked, holding up her slice.
"Controlling our destinies," they said in unison.
"How do you like your first pizza party, son?" Kinger asked as they ate.
"It's A-OK, dad!" Caine announced.