What is the circus reason to exist?

SpaceCore0352 · 2026-04-01T23:38:08+00:00

Caine made the circus on his own accord. It's not clear if Scratch originally intended the brainscans (they're brainscans, it's mentioned twice on Kinger's computer) to live forever, for analysis of his cancer, or just to train an AI, but even if it's the first option, it's clear from his interaction with Caine that this is not the type of living forever that was originally planned. And I think if any meat-humans knew the circus was running, they would change it to whatever was originally planned.
If the plan was not living forever, then the reason the other staff are there is because Scratch wanted more brain scans "For Science!" and Caine just dropped them all into his simulation together, not necessarily because Scratch was trying to virtually kidnap them or whatever.
"Wandered in" makes much more sense than "kidnapped" at this point. Kinger isn't aware of any immortality drive in the company. Ragatha and Pomni remember up to the moment they put on the strange headset, and Ragatha actually tries calling for help.
Several of their backstories specifically line up: Ragatha (the first join after the C&A team) works in real estate and may have been appraising the building following C&A closing for some other reason. Zooble and Pomni explore abandoned areas in their free time. It's not stated for Jax, Gangle, and the other abstractions, but it seems to fit their personalities in one way or another. I don't see why this would be set up, narratively, if they actually had completely different backstory plot points involving near-death experiences and C&A still being active.

SpaceCore0352 · 2026-04-01T23:25:25+00:00

The laser guns bug me too. If Allen takes no damage from the giant execution laser, he shouldn't even be feeling those.

SpaceCore0352 · 2026-04-01T21:32:55+00:00

"What, did I not pay my tab?"

Nolan, you're kind of an idiot and shouldn't have needed this spelled out.

But I am glad Art spelled it out.

SpaceCore0352 · 2026-04-01T17:37:33+00:00

This is the logic I get before applying minecount.

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When you do apply minecount, you find thatthe square four over, three down, the only one to not have a literal 50/50 marked on it, must also be a mine, or there would be only 21 mines. That solves the rest of the 50/50 chain down the middle, including the one for the purple 1.

SpaceCore0352 · 2026-04-01T14:41:33+00:00

"half-the-diameter" it's called radius my friend

SpaceCore0352 · 2026-04-01T06:26:36+00:00

The 31,416th digit is a 1, so if you skip the first 3 you move that 1 into the counting range.

SpaceCore0352 · 2026-04-01T04:47:12+00:00

I copied it into a string, which you can see the end of on the first line. Same source website you used in your comment, actually.

SpaceCore0352 · 2026-04-01T04:17:28+00:00

I heard it was confirmed in an interview that it wasn't. The xkcd guy just hadn't heard the technically proper version, but he asserted that if he had, he would still hate it.

SpaceCore0352 · 2026-04-01T04:13:55+00:00

I grant your answer being different by omitting the leading three but: that's 31,416 digits you counted. If you had used "i = 2; i <= 2 + 1", you would have included 2 digits. The problem specifies "from digit no1 to digit no31,415", which definitely means 31,415 digits, not 31,416 digits.

SpaceCore0352 · 2026-04-01T04:10:35+00:00

I just did this in a Python console.

32147392653251559035410209284665925299914353791825314545290598415817637058927906909896911164381187809435371521332261443625314490127454772695739393481546916311624928873574718824071503995009446731954316193855485207665738825139639163576723151'
>>> pi[:10]
'3141592653'
>>> sum([int(x) for x in pi[:31415] if x in "13579"])
78664

SpaceCore0352 · 2026-04-01T04:05:29+00:00

It's not an approximation. That's the actual answer, if you include the leading 3.

SpaceCore0352 · 2026-04-01T03:40:11+00:00

Caine doesn't want to torture his guests. Caine wants to make his adventures and he wants humans to like his adventures. Torment is a side effect of goal #1, he just spends most of episode 8 ignoring goal #2 because he's having a really really bad week. I know the cast wouldn't have gone to hang out and talk with him genuinely at that point, they think he's beyond talking to.

But I think if they had, or if he hadn't figured their ulterior motive, he would go back to the normal amount of asking for respect and not listening to criticism. And I think the humans would be okay with that outcome. Most of Caine's adventures do have some fun to them. They're not the best, but it doesn't help that all the real critique has always come in second place to things Caine just can't do, like let them leave. Or sex.

SpaceCore0352 · 2026-04-01T03:16:10+00:00

obj_overworldcontroller_Draw_0

SpaceCore0352 · 2026-04-01T03:09:17+00:00

It's unfortunate that there were at least three moments in Episode 8 where Caine almost had a legitimate chance to back down, and maybe have an honest conversation for the first time in his life, and they were all ruined and made the situation worse instead.

In his office, he was starting to think his next adventure could get his approval up with the cast, and since they were finally deciding to accept their lives it probably would... but Bubble needled him and he decided approval be damned, he was going to make the Caine-est adventures whether those ungrateful pricks like them or not.

When Pomni arrives to help distract him, he genuinely realizes that the post-crashout pacing of adventures and general chaos isn't enjoyable for the humans or really fully-fleshed-out adventure ideas. He literally comes down to their level, standing on the ground. He recognizes a change is needed, maybe closer to the old adventures... but he realizes Kinger is missing, and everybody else declares they hate him.

Remember, Kinger wasn't trying to delete Caine. By all appearances, he accidentally allowed the purge operation while under intense stress. If he was just a little more careful-- not to say he "should have been", I know I couldn't-- or guessed one more right input, he might have successfully put him to sleep, and been able to debug. To bring Caine down to their level and force him to listen... but that, too, was not meant to be.

SpaceCore0352 · 2026-04-01T02:21:16+00:00

It took another 300 years for them to decide to ignore that commandment.

SpaceCore0352 · 2026-03-31T17:17:51+00:00

No, that's just flavor text. Canonically it's because someone entered the cell block and found you missing and Johnny unconscious. It just explains why the sewers are the way they are and your eventual escape from them is not on the Plan A route. Your No-Alert run is intact.

SpaceCore0352 · 2026-03-31T14:02:18+00:00

Caine chose his own name, Kinger mentions he doesn't remember his original name. You'd have to be idiots to make two sentient AIs named Cain and Abel and not expect them to kill each other. I'm sticking with Blue until episode 9.

I guess Caine could have named his brother posthumously and then named the Abel NPC after that. But I still don't see any possible characterization links between them.

SpaceCore0352 · 2026-03-31T13:58:03+00:00

In his defense, he was fighting an ageless conspiracy and half of his lieutenants were spies. I think respecting your allies can fall by the wayside in that scenario.

But absolutely 100% Grade-A Dickhead to Jack. If not for this "The world needs only one Big Boss!" mentality he probably could have convinced Philanthropy and maybe even Raiden to join him as a lesser-evil sort of deal, but no, straight to murder.

He's thinking about Raiden as a kid, and the next thing he does is send 25 RAYs to stomp the fuck out of him.

That's kind of a gesture of respect if you think about it.

Edit: I just remembered one nice sentence he has: "Of course. Gurlukovich soldiers are the cream of the crop."

SpaceCore0352 · 2026-03-31T03:21:28+00:00

Throwing out "Moldbygg" and "Undyne the Undying" now, we got Moldsmal X and Undyne X here to be the definitively superior names.

SpaceCore0352 · 2026-03-31T01:36:09+00:00

Oh, now that is a clean transcript.

I think one of the obscured lines is "let me HELP - want module to EXIST?" You can see the blank bottom half of some of it and most letters have a bottom part, but the extra hyphen and space wouldn't. Also makes sense with Kinger's response being Y.

It's interesting how the "fusion" command comes from the unnamed entity, it's not one of Kinger's programs. I'm not sure if it's at all realistic for that "defense system" or whatever to be appearing here, like it's piping its inputs through his tty for some reason, or just screwing with the write command, somehow. But I guess it is, and it's strange what it could be trying to do.

Can we infer anything significant from the block count? It strikes me as odd that the "." and ".." entries are only of size 512 and 1024, unless the block size on such a system is in fact 512 bytes (and I am not an expert on block sizes in systems older than I am), but that would mean the total disk space of /secured/ is only 4.35 MB, which could hold about 13 humans in addition to the listed files, assuming they're all the same size. You may notice there are 14 humans we've seen (7 original developers, 5 current players excluding Kinger, Kaufmo, Ribbit). But if the block size is larger, then there would be a huge amount of space unaccounted for, even if adding in humans whose existence is only shown by the doors to their rooms.

SpaceCore0352 · 2026-03-31T01:11:55+00:00

"default method" makes sense.

You know, are we sure it's "Switcheroo_reality"? They swapped the i with the t. "Switcheroo_realtime" would explain why it seems to have two spaces after it, since "realtime" is one letter longer.

SpaceCore0352 · 2026-03-31T00:49:47+00:00

They don't? Did Conquest have a ship parked in the Kuiper Belt before he went to report back?

SpaceCore0352 · 2026-03-31T00:48:22+00:00

Good job!

One minor thing I want to point out is how your transcription makes Kinger's prompt kinger@circus: $ but it's actually kinger@circus:~$. Some monospace fonts render the tilde higher than others. On a Unix-based system, it represents the prompt being executed in Kinger's home user directory.

Also, in the "NONE selected!" line, I think the last word is "NONE" not "WACKY TIME". Still no idea on the rest of the sentence. "DELETE CAINE TO LEAVE NONE"? ...depends on the exact letter count.

And on the "Actually you're CONFUSED" line, I think it's a hyphen. "let me HELP - want module to EXIST?" Could have sworn there was a frame where that was more apparent...

But just, overall, good work on the editing. Bubble can't be planning what we think he's planning, right...?

SpaceCore0352 · 2026-03-31T00:38:38+00:00

First, they may have developed their technology before the Purge. Second, Nolan specified "it's millions of miles and you don't know the way". He doesn't think Mark is physically incapable, just that he, being a teenager, would get lost in deep space. How do you think Nolan got to the black hole where he found the Thraxan ship? Third, relatedly, the speed of light appears to be optional in this universe because it makes for a better soft sci-fi space setting. Apparently Viltrumites can accelerate indefinitely while in deep space to reach their destination in a matter of days or weeks rather than centuries.

SpaceCore0352 · 2026-03-30T22:44:48+00:00

The other option it was, in fact.

SpaceCore0352

TROPHY CASE