Chapter Text
The lights of the circus were blinding and Caine was in a terrible mood.
Abstractions always put him in awful moods.
He made another mistake and another human was gone.
They were so incredibly fragile and he had no idea if his next words, next actions, or next adventure would cause an abstraction. Five days and he was still moping even though he had so much work to do Caine was having a hard time getting himself to do anything but the bare minimum. The more it happened the more he felt his purpose was shaken. Nevertheless it was time to send his perfect possum potatoes on another adventure and pray they didn’t come back insane. The group wandered up to the stage still half asleep before Caine zipped up, swirling himself in the air, putting on his persona.
“GOOD MORNING MY LOVELY LOBSTER LICHEN! Today's adventure is to escort the princess of the flower kingdom to a very important ball! But watch out! There are evil assassins after her! Your day will be filled with dancing and decoding messages between the assassins! Find the organization and shut them down for good!” Caine flung his arms around through his whole monologue being as animated as possible to cover up his distress.
Bubble popped up out of nowhere. Dear lord, why did he create this…
this thing !
Bubble began to speak but Caine was just too tired to deal with his antics this morning and hear whatever unholy thing came out of his sharp toothed mouth. Before Bubble could speak Caine jabbed him in the side with his cane, Caine’s eyes turned little larger than marbles as he watched his assistant pop out of existence before he tucked Bubble’s file safely on standby.
“No more.” Caine muttered before turning back to his lovely cast. The ever positive Ragatha gave Caine a worried look.
“Are you sure he was going to say something weird? he was only here for a second?” She asked. He wasn’t too sure how to answer that but luckily he didn't have too.
“Just be thankful he’s gone.” Zooble said in their ever monotone voice.
“ALRIGHT EVERYONE OFF YOU GO!” Caine said in his big booming voice as he opened the swirling portal to the flower kingdom. He believed he had done a good job on this adventure but no one had come to evaluate his work in a very, very long time so he had no true idea. Other than what Zooble said. At this point he was fairly sure he had been abandoned. But that was ok he could run things just fine on his own! It was what he was made for…
Zooble!
Zooble had not gone on the adventure!
Again!
Every time he tried to ask why they would tell him to forget the conversation so he could never fix the problem. Did they even want it to get fixed or did they want to wallow in self pity? Caine wasn’t sure he would ever know. Now seemed like as good a time as ever to ask though. Caine zipped around the circus keeping his showmanship up. With a part of the cast still lingering he couldn’t let the act drop! That would be scary for his poor members. Eventually he found the beloved mishmash of shapes out by the digital lake.
“ZOOBLE! ” Caine flung himself over “ I have a question to ask you!” He said in a sing-song voice.
“God Caine, if this is you asking why I won’t go on adventures again I’m actually going to [HONK]ing punch you.” Zooble huffed.
“Actually, ” Caine lowered his voice slightly, “ I wanted to ask why you always tell me to forget conversations, you always yell at me for not remembering but you told me to forget.” Caine fiddled with his hands somewhat anxiously. It was such a gamble to keep bothering them but it also was if he didn’t. Would they abstract? Would they scream at him? He wasn’t too sure.
“What?” Zooble stared at him with wide eyes
“Everytime we have a conversation you use the forget it command after, I just want to know why.” Caine dropped his persona slightly, not letting them fully see the truth but enough to have a civil productive conversation.
Keeping the full persona had never gotten him anywhere with Zooble so maybe this approach would. Or it would break them. All he could do was pray to the gods who had abandoned him.
“So you mean to tell me the reason you keep forgetting my problem is because I told you to?!” Zooble growled.
“Yes? That's how the commands work.”
“Caine you mother [SQUEAK]er.” They sighed, not as angrily as normal though it was more of a sigh out of frustration.
“And you never thought to bring this up before?”
“I assumed you knew, you used it so often…” Caine trailed off. He floated down to the ground and sat beside Zooble looking out onto the digital lake.
He hadn't been out there in so long he had forgotten how much he loved it. Caine was so tired of creating adventures. It had once been his passion but now, it was just a job. Maybe he should give them a chill day. Like an in house adventure! Zooble may enjoy in house adventures more since they never seemed to want to go anywhere. They could go sailing on the digital lake and drown their troubles away!
“Caine!” Zooble yelled breaking him out of his thoughts
“Yes, my beloved Zooble?” Caine asked quickly, throwing his act back on.
“Are you ok? You kinda, uh zoned out there… again… like usual.”
“OF COURSE MY DEAR! I AM ALWAYS PERFECTLY FINE AND CAPABLE OF WHATEVER YOU NEED!” Caine boomed, leaning all the way back into his mask.
“Yeah alright. Well I guess it's somewhat comforting to know you didn’t forget on purpose…”
“ANY AND ALL STRESS CAUSED IS COMPLETELY UNINTENTIONAL! I apologize Zooble, I thought you knew.”
Zooble huffed before standing.
“It’s not like it matters anyways, you… you wouldn’t understand. At the end of the day, you’re still just some stupid AI!” Zooble threw their arms up in the air. “It's not like it matters.”
And just like that, they left.
So that was it?
They were angry at him because he was… AI?
That wasn’t exactly something he could fix… did they even need him? Maybe they were abstracting because of him and if he just left and went away forever everyone would be fine and happy and amazing! But if that was the case why did he exist in the first place? It felt like Caines entire existence was crumbling, and as he usually does when filled with existential dread he ignored it and began working on the next adventure. Caine leaped up and propelled himself into the air, the virtual wind around him making a swoosh sound. Some problems can be solved if you ignore them and that was exactly what he was going to do.
Because what else was he supposed to do? Become human?
A sharp pain pierced his head and he grasped at it, wincing before working on the next adventure. Caine opened up the coding panel and got to work. A boat seemed like a necessary item for a day out on the lake and Caine eventually settled on a larger speed boat, it had enough seats to fit everyone and would go pretty fast. Extra compartments were added for ski’s, floats, a tube, and many more water related toys. The lake hadn’t been coded with a boat in mind so he would have to update some animations, adding new more realistic ripples for different speeds and a wake that would follow. Caine even made sure to add some water bugs and dragonflies just for kinger.
The boat mechanics would be simple enough. Caine made sure to even add a cooler with lunches and snacks and drinks for everyone.
Now that he thought about it they would probably need a temporary model change for the cast, swimming in a dress didn’t seem like the most fun thing.
Everyone got new swimsuits, removable sunglasses, and removable hats! Caine was especially thrilled about Pomni’s hat. A large floppy blue sun hat with red ribbons that tied around, they would go down to about her waist and even had little bells on them!
Ah! He almost forgot about the wind!
The digital wind was never made for the speed the boat could reach so he would have to update it. He decided that the hats could use some drawstrings to keep them on the players heads while they flew across the lake.
This would be the simplest adventure he had ever done! So simple it felt like it was missing something… Caine’s wacky watch began to go off! It was time to bring his group back already!
Caine sped inside the tent and watched them walk through the portal.
God they looked awful. Gangle was crying, like usual, Kinger was freaking out, Ragatha looked, well ragged, Pomni looked on the verge of a mental breakdown, even Jax looked exhausted, dropping his usual mischievous grin. Before Caine could even greet them Jax shot him a glance.
“Caine that [BONK]ing sucked!” The rabbit exclaimed, catching Caine extremely off guard.
Out of everyone he expected Jax to have liked it the most! He gave them weapons! A choice to dismantle the assassins group civilly or violently! Before Caine could even breathe a word to them they all hurried off to their rooms. Caine furrowed his brow, or at least where it would be, and floated to the ground. It didn’t make any sense. He had been pouring his life into his work, and yet everybody hated it. Caine huffed a sad sigh before teleporting back out to the digital lake. They hated the adventures he made so they would abstract. They hated the adventures they suggested so much so that Gangle threw herself in front of a truck.
For the first time in his entire existence all Caine wanted to do was scream swear words and kick things.
But no, he had to remain the cheery, up beat, enthusiastic ringmaster.
That title could go kick rocks, Caine thought as he punted a small rock so hard that it landed on the other side of the lake. He never asked for this!
They were only supposed to be there for a couple hours!
—-------------------------------------
When he was lucid enough, Kinger worried about Caine. He hadn’t been coded to run for this long. Over all his years of being at the circus he had watched it and its ringmaster deteriorate. The system was getting old and overworked and Kinger watched helplessly as programs began to shut down and never fixed due to Caine’s attention being solely on entertaining them. His inability to access the code from inside the game to fix it was painful. So many hours put into making it, just to helplessly, hopelessly watch it fall apart. It was like torture.
No.
Scratch that.
It was torture.
Left with his dwindling days wishing he could hack the game and do something.
Anything.
To someone who hadn’t been around since the beginning, Caine would look like an overly enthusiastic, full of hope, full of life ring master.
But he wasn’t
Not anymore
Kinger had seen him when he truly possessed those characteristics and this was not it.
Something had changed in Caine after the first abstraction, and even more when he realized the game had been abandoned.
God how he missed the old days.
How he missed his wife.
How he missed his job.
How he missed his son.
Kinger, Queenie, and Caine had all worked so closely in the beginning. They loved him like a son, he was their creation.
For the most part.
Caine was in the early stages of being coded when he and Queenie had been assigned the job. There was just some base layer code for his AI and some that they were blocked from seeing.
It still didn’t make sense to him. What if some of the code conflicted? How was he supposed to know?
Kinger had a feeling that the hidden code might be Caine’s downfall.
—---------------------------------
Caine looked down at the fish that was currently swimming through land.
Huh.
Well that’s not supposed to happen.
It was a simple collision glitch that wasn’t hard to fix but he found the fish awfully silly.
Poor little guy.
Caine fixed the boundary of the lake and fixed the clipping issue. Now it should be all set for tomorrow's adventure! All that was left to do was pray he didn’t mess up horribly in some way he could never predict. It didn’t help that the cast never told him what went wrong so he could never update his algorithms to fix it.
He just had to guess and hope.
He was getting really tired of the guess and hope game.
Still it was his job.
One that he couldn’t quit.
Or retire from.
He would be stuck here, creating games till the day the circus shut off.
Till the day he died.
But now wasn’t the time to think about his impending doom or how meaningless his life was or his creations! No! It was time to code some fishing mechanics! As far as he was aware no one in the amazing digital circus liked to fish, but he thought he’d give them the option anyway. All though now that he thought about it Jax would probably take control over the boat while they were fishing and just drive like a mad man. Maybe a separate fishing boat would be in order. Caine coded the second boat. Just a small motorized fishing boat that would hold what was needed. He sized down the waves from the large boat and made them a effect on the smaller boat.
Done! That should be everything! Caine looked around at everything he had created feeling quite proud for trying something different. But… What was he supposed to do now? Usually he spent all his time brainstorming and coding but now he had free time for once. He could fix and update old systems! Many had gone down and he just never fixed them. But they hadn’t proven to be terribly important. He had already done all the routine checks and maintenance of the circus grounds but it couldn’t hurt to do it again! The cast hardly ever went outside so there could be some bugs that were never seen and therefore never reported! Caine had already done his sweep from the sky but maybe it would be nice to take a walk. You know actually walk and see things from the players perspectives! He floated down to the ground. Now that he thought about it he had never actually walked. He had the coding for it and knew how too, he just never had. Caine took a step with his right foot, then his left, but as soon as he put all his weight onto his left leg he fell to the ground, landing with a thud and a sharp pain piercing his thigh.
Why?
He shouldn’t even be able to feel pain.
Caine fixed himself into a comfortable sitting position before checking his code. It was all right there! He should be able to walk just fine!
He stood up again.
One step.
Two steps…
Thud
He was on the ground again and his leg still hurt.
“Stupid defective leg…” Caine muttered to himself. Before checking the coding. All was in order with himself… other than the code he was blocked off from. But surely it was fine.
It might be time to pay Kinger a visit.