Imagine putting on a VR headset, expecting to play some game. Instead, you find yourself in a strange, colorful circus. You can’t remember your name nor can you find the exit. You’re forced to spend an eternity acting as a plaything for an unstable ringmaster AI.
Many fans believe this is what happened to the human players in the indie animated series The Amazing Digital Circus (TADC). It’s called the SOMA theory. And if it’s true, it could change everything we think we know about the Digital Circus.
What Is the SOMA Theory?
The popular fan theory gets its name from SOMA, a 2015 horror game by Frictional Games. In SOMA, a man named Simon Jarrett agrees to a brain scan after a car accident leaves him with serious injuries. He wakes up nearly 100 years in the future, in an underwater facility called PATHOS-II. The surface world above has been destroyed. And the horror isn’t just the monsters.
Because in SOMA, scanning a brain only copies it while the original you is left behind. The copy wakes up believing it is the real person with real memories, feelings, and no idea it’s actually a duplicate. The Simon who got his brain scanned is not the same Simon trapped inside PATHOS-II in the year 2104.
Many fans speculate that the real Pomni, Kinger, Ragatha, Zooble, Gangle and Jax are still in the human world living their lives or have passed away. They put on headsets that scanned their minds and made digital copies that were uploaded into the circus. Meanwhile, copies of their minds are stuck inside a nightmare with no idea of what really happened.
The Clues Were There From the Beginning
The possibility of the SOMA theory being true was hinted at from the very beginning.
At the start of the pilot for TADC, Pomni said she’d put on a headset only to wind up in the circus. We later see the office room with the computer and headset that sent Pomni to the digital world in the first place while she’s looking for the exit.
Then there’s the way the characters exist in the circus. While the human players can eat (digital) food and sleep, That makes sense cause they’re just an avatar. A copied mind running as data has no physical needs. The players don’t get sick or suffer any permanent injuries, which is great considering what Caine puts them through during his adventures. They can feel pain though it doesn’t seem to be as intense a sensation compared to what they’d feel in the real world.
Pomni also can’t remember her real name. Neither can the others. This detail gets brushed aside early on, but shouldn’t a person transported into a virtual world still know who they are? It’s possible that the players are an imperfect digital scan that didn’t carry everything to the digital world like it should have.
Episode 2 “Candy Carrier Chaos!” gave us another clue that supports the SOMA theory further. Pomni and one of the NPCs Gummigoo find themselves inside a test room after falling underneath the world’s map. It’s where Gummigoo finds models of all the NPCs featured in the current adventure, including his own. He realizes his memories aren’t real. He can’t remember his mother’s face because Caine never made a model for her. His entire life was a lie.
Feeling sorry for Gummigoo, Pomni invites him to live in the circus but Caine deletes him as soon as he spots Gummigoo. Caine explains that NPCs are forbidden from staying at the circus so he won’t confuse them with the humans.
But does that line actually mean anything? If the humans are just neural scans, what does that say about the NPCs? Were they originally humans whose minds were uploaded into the virtual world? It’s possible that there’s no real difference between the NPCs Caine and the players’ avatars and that’s why they need to be separated.
Episode 8 “hjsakldfhl” Changed Everything
For a long time, the SOMA theory was speculation but episode 8, “hjsakldfhl” made it feel likely.
During a rare moment of lucidity, Kinger reveals that he used to work at a AI company called C&A. The company is responsible for creating Caine, who’s purpose was to create anything until he went rogue.
Later in the episode, Kinger accesses Caine’s files. The screen shows a folder labeled CA_NeuralScans (Obsolete). Individual character data files and entries tagged with dates. Caine was created on October 30, 1996. Scratch’s entry into the circus is October 15, 1999. Ragatha’s date is October 15, 2008.
Kinger mentions his colleague Scratch, had a brain tumor. Some fans believe that Scratch created the headset as a means of achieving immortality and tested it on his team. The original process probably required physical brain scans. The folder says “Obsolete,” suggesting the method was eventually replaced by a headset-based version at some point.
If the characters really are avatars created from neural scans, that puts the entire series into a new, horrifying light. All this time, the players thought they were transported to the circus. And if they could find the exit, they’ll be free.
But what if there is no exit because the players are no longer human?
What are they going to do when they realize they’re not really human anymore? That they’re forced to spend an eternity trapped inside of a dying, digital world while their original selves carry on with their lives?
Episode 9 is the series finale so hopefully, series creator Gooseworx will confirm if the SOMA theory is true once and for all.
