Chapter Text
You were the newest arrival in the Circus. Much like the others, you don’t remember your name, or much else from your time in what they call the “Macroverse”. As far as you can recall, it was nothing too remarkable. Your average college dropout, working a few customer service jobs here and there, hanging out with friends when you had the time, not the most extraordinary existence. You’d like to say you could remember anyone from the outside world, but everything you can recall is hazy, specific details like names and faces, including your own, seem masked by a thick layer of fog.
While you hadn’t been here long, certainly not as long as the others, you weren’t sure what all the fuss was about. Everyone seemed obsessed with finding an exit and getting back to the outside world, but you weren’t too keen on the idea of leaving. Being burnt out from Caine’s adventures absolutely beat being burnt out from the unforgiving, soul-crushing machine of American capitalism, and while the other members of the Circus absolutely hated the daily adventures, you’d take that over a 12-hour weekend shift at the mall any day.
Your obviously feigned enthusiasm for finding a way out, and your general “kiss-ass” attitude towards Caine & his adventures didn’t exactly make you the most popular person amongst your acquaintances. In the Macroverse, while you did truly despise most of the people with power over you, you had always been afraid of breaking or bending the rules, and that trait carried over into the Circus with you.
However, being the AI’s favorite subordinate didn’t exactly come at a loss (aside from your social standing), in fact it actually came with some nice perks. You weren’t sure to what extent he could feel emotions, but nevertheless it was endlessly entertaining to watch him fawn over you, and he could conjure in almost anything your heart desired, as long as you asked nicely. He didn’t seem to give such special treatment to anyone else, and you’re sure that fact made the others resent you further. Of course, you found him endlessly entertaining. It almost felt like a game to you, sucking up to him and reaping the rewards. Since he was just an AI, you doubted he had true feelings like the rest of you, so toying with him a little didn’t matter too much to you.
While a bit aloof and not exactly the best listener, you still didn’t quite understand what everyone had against Caine. Sure, you didn’t care about him, but to you, he had been nothing but a gentleman. The others told you he was keeping them trapped in the Circus, but was anyone even sure that the Circus had an exit to begin with? You decided to give Caine the benefit of the doubt. Who knows, he could be just as trapped as the rest of you. As far as you were concerned, you were happy and safe inside the circus. The whole world operated on cartoon physics, meaning you physically couldn’t die or be badly injured, even if you really wanted to. And it’s not like Caine would ever hurt you intentionally, being violent just didn’t seem to be in his nature. After all, he told you he had been programmed to make everyone happy. You didn’t consider him a true friend, but you didn’t hate him like the others did. After all, can AI even feel friendship?
However, there is what some call a fate worse than death inside the Circus. There were whispers amongst your associates of something called “abstraction”, the death of all hope. From what you gather, those who give up entirely (or are otherwise driven mad) undergo a werewolf-esque transformation into some kind of mindless, violent beast. Those who abstract are locked in the cellar seemingly until the end of time, most likely in order to keep them from injuring other members of the Circus. You shudder at the thought of such a fate, but you take solace in the fact that as long as you stay on Caine’s good side, it most likely won’t happen to you. Hopefully.
As the days passed into weeks, and weeks into months, you found yourself spending more and more time with Caine and less time with everyone else in the Circus. It wasn’t intentional. With a snap of his fingers, he could instantly summon you anywhere in the Circus, at any time he wanted. To him, you were such a good listener, you loved hearing about all of his ideas and you never talked back, which was a nice change of pace from the daily barrage of insults he faced from the others. To him, while you were obviously inferior to his incredible power, you were the perfect pet.
Humans had always interested him, especially their relationships with one another. While Caine did occasionally consider humans to be “lesser” creatures, like animals, he longed for true connection like human beings had, and had poured countless hours into crawling webpages from all over the internet, learning everything he could about all kinds of human relationships. Friendships, families, romance, you name it.
Once in a while, he would stumble across a not-so-family-friendly website. It was accidental at first, but eventually he found himself seeking out these kinds of websites more and more. He found them disgusting, but boy were they fascinating. These webpages and videos stirred up something odd in the pit of his digital stomach, but he wasn’t quite sure what. Maybe it was humiliation? The Circus was supposed to be a family-friendly space, those who inhabited this world weren’t even allowed to swear without being censored. Of course, as the God of this world, he didn’t need to follow the rules, and the censors hardly ever applied to him, but it still felt so wrong. This corner of the internet was his secret shame. He didn’t share anything he’d learned with anyone, he couldn’t, not his right-hand-AI, Bubble, and most certainly not his best friend, you. Still, something in him longed to show you everything he had spent countless hours researching. Maybe it was desperation? Caine knew that as a machine, he could never truly make love, never truly feel much of anything at all, but being surrounded by so much humanity every day was driving him to the verge of abstraction. He yearned for something, but he just couldn’t figure out what it was he truly wanted.
What truly sent him spiraling, however, was one very simple demand from one of the other humans in the Circus. It was a morning just like any other, he had come up with an amazing idea for a new adventure for his pet humans, and was about to send everybody on their way, when the group began hurling their typical barrage of insults, begging not to go, or insisting on at least doing an adventure they came up with. Nothing made him angrier. Why weren’t HIS adventures good enough for them? This was his entire purpose, how DARE they make him feel inadequate. Didn’t they know that he’s the one in charge?
Finally, when he snapped and asked the group what they truly wanted, Zooble said something that absolutely shook him to his core.
“I want the ability to have s[%$!#]x.”
The thought alone almost made his programming crash. He felt a shiver go down his spine, his physical form glitching briefly. This, he thought, is this what I want? He glanced over at your face, trying to gauge your reaction to this idea. He didn’t understand why the first thing he thought of was how you would feel about this. You were blushing, looking down at your feet, fidgeting with your hands, doing anything except looking at him. There it was again, the incredibly overwhelming feeling of shame.
His attention was snapped back to the group when he heard Jax exclaim,
“NO WAY. Are we finally having this conversation!?”
Caine knew he had to change the subject. If he dwelled on this for too long, or even entertained the thought to the humans….. No. The Circus was a family friendly place for players of all ages. He couldn’t. He knew he couldn’t. Still, something in his programming screamed out for that kind of connection. He was visibly shaken, finding it hard to even form a coherent thought to say next, and something in him knew that they knew he wanted this. Absolute and utter humiliation. He could have abstracted right then and there, if he were capable of abstraction.
They were all staring at him, waiting, and he couldn’t think of a single thing to say except,
“Oh. Hi Zooble!”
The group of humans sighed in exasperation. Caine knew he probably fucked that one up royally, but at least he avoided the subject, for now. However, he had completely lost his train of thought. He couldn’t remember what his adventure idea was, nor did he even care. He just wanted to hightail it out of there, back to the safety of his office.
Then, he had an idea. Another way for him to observe the relationship dynamics between the humans. There was obvious tension between the group most of the time, and especially right now, as Jax and Zooble began arguing like they always do.
What if everybody did a trust exercise?
He began rattling off the rules to the already-annoyed group. This would be a two-way trust exercise, where they would be placed into teams, given one gun between them, and have to trust that they wouldn’t shoot one another.
“Anyways, why don’t you start?” Caine conjured a pistol out of thin air, and handed it to Jax.
“What!? Him!?” Zooble exclaimed.
Jax studied the pistol in his hands for a moment, before completely disregarding all of Caine’s previous instructions by raising the gun and shooting Ragatha in the face, who fell backwards with a loud yelp.
Caine was totally done with this whole ordeal. These humans did nothing but test his patience constantly, and he was over it.
“Or, yeah, we could all just shoot each other.” He stated, completely deadpan. With a snap of his fingers, he spawned an entire pile of weapons. “Here, have guns, I don’t care anymore.”
Suddenly, the ringmaster was back in his office, leaving the others to scramble for the artillery of their choosing. He leaned back in the large leather throne at his desk and sighed, exasperated. Why didn’t the humans enjoy his adventures? Isn’t that why he was created?
He summoned his assistant, Bubble. Maybe a halfway-decent conversation with a fellow AI could help him blow off some steam.
“I don’t understand, Bubble,” Caine started, “They want an exit, they want answers, they want something….. Real.” He gulped at the last word, remembering Zooble’s demand for true intimacy. Shaking off the thought, he continued. “I give them an adventure that covers all of that, and they still hate it!? Surely they don’t actually want to…” He paused, the volume of his voice lowering to almost a whisper “... to actually leave me, right?”
“No way, Jose! No way, no how!” Bubbly exclaimed, in an oddly cheerful tone, given how dire the situation was becoming.
“I-I do everything for these people, I slave over these adventures for them, I step outside my comfort zone to appeal to them, and they still hate them!” He shouted, before pausing for a moment. “...I’m starting to get the feeling that they just…. Hate…”
Caine thought of you, briefly. The thought of you leaving him, hating him, just like the others. It was enough to drive him completely mad, but his train of thought was cut short when Bubble interjected.
“Why would they hate you when they could just-” he glitched, his voice looping back to the middle of his sentence “hate you!”
Caine furrowed his brow and reached out a finger to pop Bubble, before continuing his rant.
“This is why I was created! This is my function!”
Bubble respawned. “They would rather abstract than go on your adventures!” He beamed.
“T-that can’t be true! I-I do everything for them, don’t they get that I’m trying?” Caine was starting to become hysterical. A second Bubble spawned in.
“Maybe you’re just genuinely bad at this!”
“Shut up!” Caine shouted, angrily popping both Bubbles. “No, I fixed that! I can solve any problem! I can solve this one!”
Caine leaned over his desk, studying one of the many puzzles he had in his collection, a maze of colorful wires, where you slide a bead from one side of the maze to the other in order to complete it. A simple puzzle for children, yet one that he could not solve. He’d never felt stupider.
“That’s what this is, a big puzzle that I need to solve!” He sighed, clearly exasperated.
Suddenly, he was surrounded by several Bubbles on all sides.
“DEFECTIVE!” they shouted in unison. Caine angrily floated out of his chair and began popping them one by one.
“FAULTY!” The Bubbles exclaimed again.
“SHUT UP!” Caine shouted, as more Bubbles continued to spawn in, faster than he was able to pop them.
“BROKEN! UNWORTHY!”
Caine growled, continuing to pop as many of the Bubbles as he possibly could, as one Bubble leaned in close to whisper,
“Maybe you deserve to be abandoned. You really were the lesser of the two. You deserved this.”
Caine’s eyes widened, his pupils constricting.
“ENOUGH!” He screamed, slamming both hands down onto his desk, causing the desk to clip through the floor slightly, the whole room glitching out and squealing with the sounds of electronic feedback. The puzzle he had been examining earlier fell off of his desk and exploded into a mess of individual pixels as it hit the floor.
Caine glared at nothing in particular, his whole form stuttering and flickering, the glitching spreading from his body throughout the entirety of his office. “I give them everything, and they spit in my face!”
His body began to warp, becoming incredibly unstable, his canines sharpening into long fangs. “Don’t they know what I’m capable of!?” He looked down at his hands, his voice beginning to distort.
“HUMANS.” He growled, “they only think about themselves! They’re SPOILED! They won’t abstract, they won’t leave me!” The absolutely sickening thought of you leaving wormed its way into his brain once more. “I WON’T LET THEM!” He screamed, enraged.
His whole body was a mess of pixels and static, the entire environment of his office was becoming just as unstable as he was, falling into digital ruin. He wasn’t sure if an AI such as himself could abstract, but whatever was happening was probably as close as he could get. His anger was spreading through the entirety of the circus, and it didn’t go unnoticed.
You had been sitting in your room, fiddling with a guitar that Caine had conjured up at your request, when you were startled by a series of loud booms coming from the common area. It sounded almost like the rumble of thunder. Panicked, you dropped the instrument and rushed out of your room, and into the main area of the Circus tent to see what all the fuss was about. Everyone was standing in a crowd, staring up at the hot air balloon affixed to the ceiling, the entrance to Caine’s office. The hot air balloon was beginning to glitch and warp, the usual bright red and yellow hues becoming desaturated. You got a sinking feeling in your chest. Was Caine okay?
“Holy s[%$!#]t.” Zooble muttered, staring up in horror as the instability of the hot air balloon began to spread to the rest of the Circus tent. “Do you think he finally snapped?”
“Do you think Caine is okay?” You asked, your voice a low whisper.
“Oh, who CARES if Caine is okay!?” Jax snapped, “What about the rest of us!?”
Nobody said a word, but everybody feared for the worst, watching the color fade from the Circus walls.