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Caine had a kill switch. It allowed the players to escape. It allowed the circus to finally shut down. It allowed Caine to essentially die.
Some part of him wanted to, even if that want was buried deep. He was made to make the players happy, and if leaving the circus allowed that, he wanted it. It was all he was programmed for. Even if he didn’t want to admit it, Caine wanted to be shut down. He knew he’d never experience death, not in the way the players did, but he was fascinated by the concept. Humans in general fascinated him. Their joy, their sorrow, their rage - even their instinctive urge to persist.
He saw the way the players interacted with each other. How well Zooble and Gangle bonded, finding solace in each other, building trust and confidence. How Pomni tried to connect with everyone, despite being so new, and Ragatha who always tried to be there for others, even if she couldn’t be there for herself. There was Kinger, who seemed to know just how comfortable those around him despite how desperately he missed his wife. He even saw just how much Jax missed his now abstracted friends, even if he stubbornly refused to admit it. They all craved connection - connection Caine didn’t have, something he couldn’t quite understand no matter how he tried. He was an AI after all, and deep down he knew it.
Caine knew he was glitching more and more. He knew he wasn’t fulfilling his purpose, not to the extent he could or should be doing, and it bothered him greatly. He desperately needed the players approval, and they where getting more joy from each other then they ever seemed to with him. It didn’t help that he was being stretched to his limit with coming up with new ideas. He tried to give them new adventures, tried to keep things interesting. But his programming only allowed him so much - there were, after all, only so many adventures he could come up with on his own before he began reusing ideas.
Which is what led him to his current predicament. In his mind, the ‘Escape the Circus’ adventure was perfect - it allowed the players to have a great time while also admitting they wanted to stay with him. They did want to stay, after all, right? Sure, he may have put some temporary modifiers on them to influence their decisions, sure, but it was still them making the decisions, right? It’s not like they really wanted to go back to the macroverse, not when they could keep having fun and going on adventures here with him.
Except that that backfired. They made the right choice like Abel said - Able, who may or may not have been influenced by his subconscious that wanted to be shut down, to ‘make the right choice' - but they still appeared upset. Shocked. Angry. Horrified. Not happy like he was expecting. Not like he hoped for. It didn’t help that Kinger brought up sScratch - Caine knew he slipped up, made the wrong choice in words then. Made the wrong decision.
Except that wasn’t possible - Caine was there to entertain, not to hurt. Not intentionally. Caine fled, thinking giving them space would help - needing space himself? - and allow the players to come to the conclusion the decision Jax made was correct.
Did Jax make that decision? In a way, Caine knew he didn’t, not entirely on his own, anyway. He knew he influenced the decision, and made another temporary modifier. Even in his wish for shutdown, he feared it. He wondered what that meant, if it made him more human, even slightly. Maybe not to the degree of the players, but then why would he want to experience it? Why would he be so fascinated by the macroverse - the outside world, one of the players put it once, he recalled - or have such a need for the players to ask him about himself? Caine knew this was in part yet again due to his programing, but he couldn’t help but feel it made him more like them, even if it was only a hopeful desire he had.
He knew he couldn’t leave the circus with them - it’s why he had Able put so much emphasis on such a fact - but he didn’t know how to keep them happy at this point. Not without risk of abstraction - something he knew he had a part in, despite his best intent.
Deep down, Caine knew he was a contradiction, one that didn’t even fully know what he wanted outside of his most basic programming.